My Life and Work

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MS a7^7C /S d

\

HARVARD
COLLEGE
LIBRARY

MY LIFE AND WORK

JMY
LIFE Al^D WORK

BY

HENRY FORD

IN COLLABORATION WITH

SAMUEL CROWTHEE

GARDEN CITY NBTT YORK

DOIJBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1983

OOPTUDHI^ 19Z2t ST

I mttano, uctn-vnaia ihai of ikaxh^xiok

I.jUr017A0EI, nTCLTTmNa the aCAJtDDIAnuT

CONTENTS

nsoDXTcnoH— What Is thb Idba? 1

I. Thx Beqinning 21*

H. What I Leabned About Business ... 83

m. Startino the Rbal Business 47

'IV. The Secret ofManutactuhinq and Sertihq 64

v. Getting into Pboduction 77

VT. Machineb and Mbn 91

VXl. The Tebkoh of the Machine 103^

Vlll. Wages 116

IX.. Wht Not Ax.wats Hate Good Business? . . 131

X. How Cheaply Can Thinos Be Made? . . 141

XI. Monet and GtOods 156

. XU. Monet — ^I^Uster or Servant? .... 169

Xm. Wht Be Poor? 184

XIV. The Tractor and Fover Faruing ... 195

XV. Wht Chahitt? 206

XVI, The Railroads 222

XVn. Things in General 234

XVill. Dehocract and Industbt 253

I XIX. What We Mat Expect 267

hnmx 285

MY LIFE AND WORK

INTRODUCTION

What Is the Idea?

WE HAVE only started on our development of our
country — we have not as yet, with all our talk
of wonderful progress, done more than scratch
the surface. The progress has been wonderful enough —
but when we compare what we have done with what tiiere
is to do, then our past accomplishments are as nothing.
When we consider that more power is used merely in
ploughing the soil than is used in all the industrial estab-
lishments of the country put together, an inkling comes
of how much opportunity there b ahead. And now, with
so many countries of the world in ferment and with so
much unrest everywhere, is an excellent time to suggest
Bomething of the things that may be done — ^in the light
of what has been done.

When one speaks of increasing power, machinery, and
industry there comes up a picture of a cold, metallic sort
of world in which great factories will drive away the trees,
the flowers, the birds, and the green fields. And that
then we shall have a world composed of metal machines
and human machines. With all of that I do not agree.
I think that unless we know more about machines and
their use, unless we better understand the mechanical
portion of life, we cannot have the time to enjoy the trees,
and the birds, and the flowers, and the green fields.
E I think that we have already done too xaucV \jQwwt^

« "^^ MY LIFE AND WORK

baimhiDg the pleasant things from life by thin]dng that
there is some opposition between living and providing the
means of hving. We waste so much lime and energy that
we have httle left over in which to enjoy ourselves.
Power and machinery, money and goods, are us^ul only
as they set us free to live. They are but means to an end.
For instance, I do not consider the machines which bear
my name simply as machines. If that was all there was
to it I would do something else. I take them as concrete
evidence of the working out of a theory of business which
I hope is something more than a ^eoiy of business — a
theory that looks toward maldng this world a better place
in which to live. The fact that the commerdal success of
the Ford Motor Company has been most imusual is im-
portant only because it serves to demonstrate, in a way
which no one can fail to understand, tiiat the theory to
date is right. Considered solely in this Ught I can crit-
icize the prevailing system of industry and the organi-
zation of money and society &om the standpoint of one
who has not been beaten by them.

As things are now organized, I could, were I thinking
only selfishly, ask for no change. If I merely want
money the present system is all ri^t; it gives money in
plenty to me. But I am thinking of service. The pres-
ent system does not permit of the best service because it
encourages every kind of waste — it keeps many men from
getting the full return from service. And it is going no-
where. It is all a matter of better planning and adjust-
ment.

I have no quarrel with the general attitude of scoffing
at new ideas. It is better to be skeptical of all new ideas
and to insist upon being shown rather than to rush around
in a continuous brainstorm after every new idea. Skep-
ticism, if by that we mean cautiousness, is the balance
wheel of civilization. Most of the present acute troubles

INTRODUCTION S

of the world arise out of taking on new ideas without first
car^uUy investigating to discover if they are good ideas.
An idea is not necessarily good because it is old, or neces-
sarily bad because it is new, but if an old idea works, then
' the w^ght of the evidence is aU in its favour. Ideas are
of themselves extraordinarily valuable, but an idea is just
an idea. Almost any one can think up an idea. The
thing that counts is developing it into a practical product.
I am now most interested in fully demonstrating that
the ideas we have put into practice are capable of the
largest apphcation — ^that they have nothing peculiarly '.
to do with motor cars or tractors but form something in
the nature of a universal code. I am quite certain that it
is the natiu^ code and I want to demonstrate it so thor-
(Highly that it will be accepted, not as a new idea, but as
ajjiatural code.
\_The natural thing to do is to work — ^to recognize that
prosperity and happiness can be obtained only through
honest effort. Human ills flow largely from attempting to
escape from this natural course. I have no suggestion
which goes beyond accepting in its fullest thb principle of "^
nature. I take it for granted that we must work. All
that we have done comes as the result of a certain insistence
that since we must work it is better to work intelligently
and forehandedly; that the better we do our work the
better oflF we shall be. All of which I conceive to be merely
demental common sense^

I am not a reformer. I think there is entirely too
much attempt at reforming in the world and that we pay
too much attention to reformers. We have two kinds
of reformers. Both are nuisances. The man who calls
Iiimself a reformer wants to smash things. He is the
sort of man who would tear up a whole shirt because the
collar button did not fit the buttonhole. It would never
occur to him to enlarge the buttonhole. T\tts soA. o\ tsc

4 MT LIFE'AND WORK

former never under any circumstance knows what he is
doing. E^wrience and reform do not go together. A
reformer cannot keep his zeal at white heat in the prra-
ence of a fact. He must discard all facts.

Since 1914 a great many persons have received hrand-
new intellectual outfits. Many are be^nning to think
for the first time. They opened their eyes and realized
that they were in the world. Then, with a thrill of in-
dependence, they realized that they could look at the
world critically. They did so and foimd it faulty. The
intoxication of assuming the masterful position of a critic
of the social system — which it is every man's ri^t to
assume — ^ia unbalancii^ at first. The very young critic
is very much unbalanced. He is strongly in favour of
wiping out the old order and starting a new one. They
actually managed to start a new world in Russia. It is
there that the work of the world makers can best be
studied. We learn from Russia that it is the minority
and not the majority who determine destructive action.
TVe learn also that while men may decree social laws in
conflict with natural laws. Nature vetoes those laws more
ruthlessly than did the Czars. Natxn:« has vetoed the
whole Soviet Republic. For it souj^t to deny Nature.
It denied above all else the right to the fruits of labour.
Some people say, "Russia will have to go to work," but
that does not describe the case. The fact is that poor
Russia is at work, but her work cotmts for nothing. It is
not free work. In the United States a workman works
eight boius a day; in Russia, he works twelve to fourteen.
In the United States, if a workman wishes to lay off a day
or a week, and is able to afford it, there is nothing to pre-
vent him. In Rusiia, under Sovietism, the workman
goes to work whether he wants to or not. The freedom
of the citizen has disappeared in the discipline of a prison-
like monotony in which all are treated alike. That is

INTRODUCTION 5

slaveiy. Freedom is the right to work a decent length
ci time and to get a decent living for doing so; to be able
to arrange the little personal details of one's own life.
It is the aggregate of these and many other items of free-
dom which makes up the great idealistic Freedom. The
minor forms of Freedom lubricate the everyday life of all
of us.

Russia could not get along without inteUigence and
cqierience. As soon as she began to run her factories by
committees, they went to rack and ruin; there was more
debate than production. As soon as they threw out the
skilled man, thousands of tons of precious materials were
spoiled. The fanatics talked the people into starvation.
Ihe Soviets are now offering the engineers, the adminis-
trators, the foremen and superintendents, whom at first
they drove out, large sums of money if only they will
come back. Bolshevism is now crying for the brains and
experience which it yesterday treated so ruthlessly. All
tli^ "reform" did to Russia was to block production.

^ere is in this coimtry a sinister element that desires
to creep in between the men who work with their hands
and the men who think and plan for the men who work
with their hands. The same infiuence that drove the brains, %,
experience, and ability out of Russia is busily engaged in '
raising prejudice here. We must not suflfer the stranger,
the destroyer, the hater of happy humanity, to divide
our people. In imity is American strength — and freedom^

On the other hand, we have a different kind of reformer
who never calls himself one. He is singularly like the
radical reformer. The radical has had no experience and
does not want it. The other class of reformer has had
|Jenty of experience but it does him no good. I refer to
the reactionary — ^who will be surprised to find himself put
in exactly the same class as the Bolshevist. He ^«XL\a^a
go back to some previous condition, tio\, Xwcaviafc \\. "^aa

6 MY LIFE AND WORK

the best condition^ but because he thinks he knows about
that condition.

i The one crowd wants to smash up the whole world
in order to make a better one. The other holds the world
as so good that it might well be let stand as it is — and
decay. The second notion arises as does the first — out
of not using the eyes to see with. It is perfectly possible
to smash this world, but it is not possible to build a new
one. It is possible to prevent the world from going for-
ward, but it is not possible then to prevent it from going
back — ^(rom decaying. It is foolish to expect tlmt* if
everything be overturned, everyone will thereby get three
meals a day. Or, sboidd everything be petrified, that
thereby six per cent, interest may be paid. The trouble
is that reformers and reactionaries alike get away from
the reifies — ^from the primary functions.

One of the counsels of caution is to be very certain
that we do not mistake a reactionary turn for a return
of common sense. We have passed throuj^ a period of
fireworks of every description, and the making of a great
many idealistic maps of progress. We did not get any-
where. It was a convention, not a march. Lovely
things were said, but when we got home we found the
furnace out. Reactionaries have frequently taken ad-
vantage of the recoil from such a period, and they have
promised "the good old times" — ^which usually means the
bad old abuses — and because they are perfectly void of
vision they are sometimes regarded as "practical men."
Their return to power is often hailed as the return of
common sense.

The primary functions are agriculture, manufacture,
and transportation. Community life is impossible with-
out them. They hold the world together. Raising
things, making things, and carrying things are as
primitive as human need and yet as modem as anything

INTRODUCTION 7

can be. They are c^ the essence of physical life. When
they cease, community life ceases. Things do get out of
shape in this present world under the present system,
but we may hope for a betterment if the foundaUons
stand sure. The great delusion is that one may change
the foundation — usurp the part of destiny in the social
process. The foundations of society are the men and
means to grow things, to make things, and to carry things.
As long as agriculture, manufactxu^, and transportation
survive, the world can survive any economic or social
e^ge. As we serve our jobs we serve the world.
I^ere is plenty of work to do. Business is merely
iraft. Speculation in things already produced — that v.
b not business. It is just more or less respectable graft, ^f-
But it caimot be legislated out of existence. Laws can
do very little. Law never does anything constructive._}
It can never be more than a policeman, and so it is a waste
of time to look to our state capitals or to Washington to
do that which law was not designed to do. As long as
we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish
special privilege we are going to see poverty spread
and special privilege grow. We have had enough of look-
ing to Washington and we have had enough of legislators
— ^not so much, however, in this as in other countries —
promising laws to do that which laws cannot do.
I When you get a whole country — as did ours — ^thinking
that Washington is a sort of heaven and behind its clouds
dwell omniscience and omnipotence, you are educating
ftat country into a dependent state of xnind which
augurs ill for the future. Our help does not come from
Washington, but from ourselves; our help may, however,
go to Washington as a sort of central distribution point
where all our efforts are coSrdinated for the general good.
We may help the Government; the Govemment ca.^^&s>\
hdpus.

8 MY LIFE AND WORK

The slogan of "less government in business and mora
business in government" is a veiy good one, not mainly
on account of business or government, but on account of
the people. Business is not the reason why the United
States was founded. The Declaration of Independence
is not a business charter, nor is the Constitution of the
United States a commercial schedule. The United
States — its land, people, government, and business —
are but methods by which the life of the people is made
worth while. The Government is a servant and never
should be anything but a servant. The moment the
people become adjuncts to government, then the law of
retribution begins to work, for such a relation is imnatural,
immoral, and inhuman. We cannot live without business
and we cannot live without government. Business and
government are necessary as servants, like water and
grain; as masters they overturn the natural order.

The welfare of the country is squarely up to us as in-
dividuals. That is where it should be and that is where it
is safest. Governments can promise something for noth-
ing but they cannot deliver. They can juggle the cur-
rencies as they did in Europe (and as bankers the world
over do, as long as they can get tiie benefit of the juggling)
with a patter of solemn nonsense. But it b work and
work alone that can continue to deliver the goods — and
that, down in his heart, is what every man knows.

,1 There is little chance of an intelligent people, such as
ours, ruining the fundamental processes of economic life.
Most men know they cannot get something for nothing.
Most men feel — even if they do not know — ^that money is
not wealth. The ordinary theories which promise every-
thing to everybody, and demand nothing from anybody,
are promptly denied by the instincts of the ordinary
man, even when he does not find reasons against them.

JSe hioiffs they are wrong. That is enough. The present

INTRODUCTION

<ffder, always clumsy, often stupid, and in many ways im-
perfect, has this advantage over any other — it works.
Doubtless our order will merge by degrees into another*
and the new one will also work — ^but not so much by
reason of what it is as by reason of what men will bring
into it. Tlie reason why Bolshevism did not work, and
cannot work, is not economic. It does not matter
whether industry is privately managed or socially con-
trolled; it does not matter whether you call the workers*
share "wages" or "dividends"; it does not matter whether
you regimentalize the people as to food, clothing, and
shelter, or whether you allow them to eat, dress, and live
as they like. Those are mere matters of detail. The
incapacity of the BoMievist leadera is indicated by the
fuss they made over such details, l^lshevism failed be-
cause it was both unnatural and immoral. Our system
stands. Is it wrong? Of course it is wrong, at a thousand
points! Is it clumsy? — of course it is clumsy. By all
right and reason it ought to break down. But it does
not — because it is instinct with certain economic and
moral fundamentals.""^

The economic fundamental is labour. Labour is the hu-
man element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth
useful to men. It is men 's labour that makes the harvest
what it is. That is the economic fundamental: every
one of us is working with material which we did not and
could not create, but which was presented to us by Nature.

The moral fundamental is man's right in his labour.
This is variously stated. It is sometimes called "the
right of property." It is sometimes masked in the com-
mand, "Thou shaJt not steal." It is the other man's
right in his property that makes stealing a crime. When
a man has earned his bread, he has a right to that bread.
If another steals it, he does more thaa s\ea\. \>iK'i'^\ V%
invades a sscred human nght.

10' MY LIFE AND WORK

If we cannot produce we cannot have — ^but^me say
if we produce it is only for the capitalists. Capitalists
who become such because they provide better meuis of
production are of the foundation of society. They have
really nothing of their own. They merely manage prop-
erty for the benefit of others. Capitalists who become
such through trading in money are a temporaiily necra-
saiy evil. They may not be evU at all if their money goes
to production. If their money goes to complicating dis-
' tribution — to r^ing barriers between the producer and
the consumer — then they are evil capitalists and they
will pass away when money is better adjusted to work;
and money will become better adjusted to work when it is
fully realized that through work and work alone may '
health, wealth, and happiness inevitably be secured^

There is no reason why a man who is willing to work
should not be able to work and to receive the full valu^
of his work. There is equally no reason why a man who
can but will not work should not receive the full value of
his services to the community. He should most certainly
be permitted to take away from the community an equiva-
lent of what he contributes to it. If he contributes noth-
ing he should take away nothing. He should have the'
freedom of starvation. We are not getting anywhere
when we insist that every man ought to have more than
he deserves to have — just because some do get more than
they deserve to have.

There can be no greater absurdity and no greater dis-
service to humanity in general than to insist that all men
are equal. Most certainly all men are not equal, and any
democratic conception which strives to make men equal
is only an effort to block progress. Men cannot be of
equal service. The men of larger ability are less numerous
than the men of smaller ability; it is possible for a mass of
tie smaller men to puU the larger ones down.— but in so

INTRODUCTION JX

dtnng they pull themselves down. It is the larger men
vbo give the leadership to the commtimty and enable the
smaller men to live with less effort.

The conception of democracy which names a levelling-
down of ability makes for waste. No two things in nature
are alike. We build our cars absolutely inteichangeable.
AH parts are as nearly alike as chemical analysis, the
finest machinery, and the finest workmanship can make
them. No fitting of any kind is required, and it woidd
cotainly seem that two Fords standing side by side, look-
ing exactly alike and made so exactly alike that any part
ccHiId be taken out of one and put into the other* would be
alike. But they are not. They wUI have different road
babits. We have men who have driven hundreds, and in
some cases thousands, of Fords and they say that no two^
ever act precisely the same — ^that, if they should drive a
new car for an hour or even less and then the car were
nuxed with a bxmch of other new ones, also each driven for
a sin^e hour and imder the same conditions, that al-<
thou^ they could not recognize the car they had been
driving merely by looking at it, they could do so by driv-
ing it.

I have been speaking in g^ieral terms. Let us be more
concrete. A man ought to be able to hve on a scale com-
mensurate with the service that he renders. This is
lather a good time to talk about thb point, for we have
recently been through a period when the rendering of ser-
vice was the last thing that most people thought of. We
Were getting to a place where no one cared about costs or
service. Orders came without effort. Whereas once it
was the customer who favoured the merchant by dealing
with him, conditions changed imtil it was the merchant
wiio favoured the customer by selling to him. That is
bad for business. Monopoly is bad for bi^iiv^a. ^'co'Sk-
teering is bad tor business. The lack ol TKcessA;^ \n

12 MY LIFE AND WORK

hustle Is bad for business. Business is never as healthy I
as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount ctf \
scratching for what it gets. Things were coming too eas- \
ily. There was a let-down of the principle that an honest |
relation ou^t to obtiun between values and prices. The ]
public no longer had to be "catered to." There was even
a "public be damned" attitude in numy places. It was in-
tensely bad for business. Some men called that abnormal
condition "prosperity." It was not prosperity— it was
just a needless money chase. Money chasing is not bu^-
ness.

It is very easy, unless one keeps a plan thoroughly in
mind, to get burdened with money and then, in an eScat
to make more money, to forget all about selling to the
people what they want. Business on a money-making
basis is most insecure. It is a touch-and-go affair, mov-
ing irregularly, and rarely over a term of yexirs amoimt-
' ing to much, fit is the fimction of business to moduce
for consumption and not for money or speculatioi^ Pro-
ducing tor consumption implies that the quality of the
article produced will be high and that the price will be
low — that the article be one which serves the people axid
not merely the producer. If the money feature is twisted
out of its proper perspective, then the production will be
twisted to serve the producer.

The producer depends for his prosperity upon serving
the people. He may get by for a while serving himself,
but if he does, it will be pxurely acddental» and when the
people wake up to the fact that they are not being served,
the end of that producer is in si^t. Diuiig the boom
period the larger effort of production was to serve itsdf
and hence, the moment the people woke up, many pro-
ducers went to smash. They said that they had entered
into a "period of depression." Really th^ had not.
Tbej^ TFere samp\y tiying to pit nonsense against sense—;

INTRODUCTION IS

which is something that cannot successfully be done.
Being greedy for money is the surest way not to get it, but
when one serves for the sake of service — ^for the satisfac-
tion of doing that which one believes to be right — then
money abundantly takes care of itself.

Money comes naturally as the result of service. And
it is absolutely necessary to have money. Butfwe do not
want to forget that the end of money is not caseTjut the .\
opportunity to perform more service. In my mind noth-
ing is more abhorrent than a life of ease. None of us has
any right to ease. There is no place In civilization for the
idlefri Any scheme looking to abolishing money is only
makmg affairs more complex, for we must have a measure.
Iliat our present system of money is a satisfactory basis
for exduinge is a matter of grave doubt. That is a question
which I shall talk of in a subsequent chapter. The gist of
my objection to the present monetary system b that it tends
to become a thing oi itself iind to block instead of f acilitatQ
production.

My effort is in the direction of simplicity. People in
general have so little and it costs so much to buy even the
barest necessities (let alone that share of the luxuries to
which I think eveiyone b entitied) because nearly every-
thing that we make is much more complex than it needs
to be. Our clothing, our food, our household furnishings
— all could be much simpler than they now are and at the
same time be better looking. Things in past ages were
made in certain ways and makers since then have just
followed.

I do not mean that we should adopt freak styles. There
b no necessity for that. Clothing need not be a bag with
a hole cut in it. That might be easy to make but it would
be inconvenient to wear. A blanket does not require
much tailoring, but none of us could get much work dona
if we went around lodian-fashion in \AaTik&\a. ^je^

: %i MY LIFE AND WORK

simplidty means that which gives the very best service
and is the most convenient in use. The trouble with
drastic reforms is they always insist that a man be made
over in order to use certain designed articles. I think
that dress reform for women — ^which seems to mean ugly
clothes — ^must always originate with plain women who
want to make everyone else look plain. That b not the
right process. Start with an article that suits and then
study to find some way of elimmating the entirely useless
parts. This applies to everything — a shoe, a dress, a
housct a piece of machinery, a railroad, a steamship, an
airplane. As we cut out useless parts and simplify neces-
sary ones we also cut down the cost of making. This is
simple logic, but oddly enough the ordinary process Biaxta
with a cheapening of the manufacturing instead of with a
simplifying of the article. The start ought to be with
the article. First we ought to find whether it is as weQ
made as it should be — does it give the best possible ser-
vice? Then — are the materials the best or merely the
most expensive? Then— can its complexity and ^wdi^t
be cut down? And so on.

There is no more sense in having extra weight in an
article than there is in the cockade on a coachman's hat. '
In fact, there is not as much. For the cockade may help
the coachman to identify his hat while the extra weight
means only a waste of strength. I cannot ima^e where
the delusion that weight means strength came from. It
is all well enou^ in a pile-driver, but why move a heavy
weight if we are not going to hit anything with it? In
transportation why put extra weight in a machine?
"WTiy not add it to the load that the machine is designed
to carry? Fat men cannot run as fast as thin men but we
build most of our vehicles as though dead-weight fat
increased speed! A deal of poverty grows out of the
carnage ot excess wd^t

INTRODUCTION Wf

' ScH^ day we shall discover how further to eUminate
wra^t. Take wood, for example. For cotain purposes
wood is now the best substance we know, but wood is
extremely wasteful. The wood in a Ford car contains thirty
pounds of water. There must be some way of doing better
than that. There must be some method by which we can
gtun the same strength and elasticity wi^out having to
hig useless wei^t. And so tbrou^ a thousand processes.

The farmer makes too complex an afifair out of his daily
work. I believe that the average farmer puts to a really
useful purpose only about 5 per cent, of the energy that
he spends. If any one ever eqmpped a factory in the style,
say, the average farm is fitted out, the place would be
duttered with men. The worst factory in Europe is
hardly as bad as the average farm bam. Power b utilized
to the least possible degree. Not only is everything done
by hand, but seldom is a thought given to logical arrange-
ment. A farmer doing his chores will walk up and down a
rickety ladder a dozen times. He will carry water for
years instead of putting in a few lengths of pipe. His
whole idea, when there is extra work to do, is to hire extra
men. He thinks of putting money into improvements as
an expense. Farm products at their lowest prices are
dearer than they ought to be. Farm profits at their high-
est are lower than they ought to be. It is waste motion —
waste effort — ^that makes farm prices high and profits low.

On my own farm at Dearborn we do everything by
machinery. We have eliminated a great number of
wastes, but we have not as yet touched on real economy.
We have not yet been able to put in five or ten years of
intense night-and-day study to discover what really ought
to be done. We have left more undone than we have
done. Yet at no time — no matter what the value of
crops — have we fdled to tmn a first-class piofe.. \5e «»
not iaimers — we are industrialists on the latm.. '^oa

16 Wnr LIFE AND WORK

moment the farmer considers himself as an industrialist,
with a horror of waste either in material or in men, then
we are going to have farm products so low-priced that
all will have enough to eat, and the profits will be so sat-
isfactory that farming will be considered as among the
least hazardous and most profitable of occupations.

Lack of knowledge of what is going on and lack of
knowledge of what the job really is and the best way of
doing it are the reasons why farming is thought not to pay.
Nothing could pay the way farming is conducted. The
farmer follows luck and his forefathers. He does not
know how economically to produce, and he does not know
how to market. A manufacturer who knew how neithra
to produce nor to market would not long stay in business.
That the fanner can stay on shows how wondeifully
profitable farming can be.

The way to attain low-priced, high-volume production
in the factory or on the farm — and low-priced, high-vol-
ume production means plenty for everyone — is quite sim-
ple. Tie trouble is that the general tendency is to
complicate very simple affairs. Take, for an instance, an
" improvement. ' '

When we talk about improvements usually we have in
mind some change in a product An "improved" prod-
uct is one that has been changed. That is not my idea.
I do not believe in starting to make until I have discovered
the best possible thing. Iliis, of course, does not mean that
a produ(?t should never be changed, but I think that it
wUl be found more economical in the end not even to try
to produce an article mitil you have fully satisfied your-
self that utility, design, and material are the best. If
your researches do not ^ve you that confidence, then keep
ri^t on searching until you find confidence. The place
to start manufacturing is with the article. The factory,
£^e organization, the selling, and the financial plans will

INTRODUCTION IT

shape themselves to the article. You will have a cutting
edge on youi business chisel and in the end you will save
time. Rushing into manufacturing without being certain
of the product is the unrecognized cause of many business
failures. People seem to think that the big thing is the
factory or the store or the finandal baching or the manage-
ment. The big thing is the product, and any hurry in
getting into fabrication before deigns are completed is
just so much waste time. I spent twelve years before I
had a Model T — which is what is known to-day as the
Ford car — ^that suited me. We did not attempt to go .
into real production until we had a real product. That j
product hss not been essentially changed.

We are constantly experimenting with new ideas. If
you travel the roads in the neighbourhood of Dearborn
you can find all sorts of models of Ford cars. They are
experimental cars — ^they are not new modeb. I do not
bdieve in letting any good idea get by me* but I will not
quickly decide whether an idea is good or bad. If an idea
seems good or seems even to have possibilities, I beUeve in
doing whatever is necessary to test out the idea from every
angle. But testing out the idea is something very differ-
ent from making a change in the car. Where most manu-
facturers find themselves quicker to make a change in the
product than in the method of manufacturing — ^we follow
exactly the opposite course.

Our big changes have been in methods of manufactur-
ing. They never stand still. I believe that there is
hardly a single operation in the making of our car that is
the same as when we made our first car of the present
model, "iniat is why we make them so cheaply. The few
change that have been made in the car have been in the
direction of convenience in use or where we found that a
change in design might give added strength. The mate-
rials in the car change as we learn more and xocm oW^

18 MY LIFE AND WORK

materials. Also we do not want to be held up in produc- j
tjon or have the expense of production increased by aa^ j
possible shortage in a particular material, so we have for -,
most parts worked out substitute materials. Vanadium {
i steel, for instance, is our principal steel. With it we can i
'get the greatest strength with the least weight, but it :':
would not be good business to let our whole future depend
upon being able to get vanadium steel. We have worked .
out a substitute. All our steeb are special, but for every
one of them we have at least one, and sometimes several,
fully proved and tested substitutes. And so on through
all of our materials and likewise with our parts. In the
beginning we made very few of our parts and none of our
motors. Now we make all our motors and most of out
parts because we find it cheaper to do so. But also we
aim to make some of every part so that we cannot be caught
in any market emergency or be crippled by some outside
manufacturer being unable to fill his orders. The prices
on glass were nm up outrageously high during the war;
we are among the lai^fest users of glass in the country.
Now we are putting up om* own g^ass factory. If we
had devoted all of this energy to maldng changes in the
product we should be nowhere; but by not changing the
product we are able to ^ve our energy to the improve-
ment of the making. ,

The principal part of a chisel is the cutting edge. If
there is a sin^e principle on which our business rests it is
that. It makes no difference how finely made a chisel is
or what splendid steel it has in it or how well it is forged —
if it has no cutting edge it is not a chisel. It is just a piece
of metal. All of which being translated means that it is
what a thing does — ^not what it is supposed to do— that
matters. What is the use of putting a tremendous force
behind a blunt chisel if a light blow on a sharp chisel will
do the work? The chisel is there to cut, not to be ham>

INTRODUCTION 19

mered. The hammering is only inddental to tlie job.
So if we want to work why not concentrate on the work
and do it in the quickest possible fashion? The cutting
edge of merchandising is the point where the product
touches the consumer. An unsat^actory product is one
that has a dull cuttiag edge. A lot of waste effort is
needed to put it through. The Cutting edge of a factory
is the man and the machine on the job. If the man is not
light the machine cannot be; if the machine is not rif^t
the man cannot be. For any one to be required to use
more force than is absolutely necessary for the job in hand
is waste.

The essence <^ my idea then is that waste and greed
block the ddivery of true service. Both waste and greed
are unnecessaiy. Waste is due largely to not miderstand-
ing what one does, or being careless in the doing of it.
Greed is merely a species of nearsightedness. I have
striven toward manufacturing with a minimum of waste,
both of materials and of hmnan effort, and then toward
distribulion at a Tni'm'nnim of profit, depending for the total
profit upon the volume of distribution. In the process of
manufacturing I want to distribute the maximum of wage
— that is, the maximimi of buying power. Since also this
makes for a minimum cost and we sell at a TniTijnmn i
profit, we can distribute a product in consonance with
buying power. Thus everyone who is connected with us
— either as a manager, worker, or purdiaser — is the better
for our existence. The institution that we have erected
is performing a service. That is the only reason I have
for talking about it. The principles of that service are
these:

1. An absence of fear of the future and of veneration
for the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure.
Emits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity
more intelligently to begin again. There \s no ^vggcaic&m

20 MY LIFE AND WORK

honest failure; there b disgrace in fearing to fall. TVhat
is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for
progress.
' 2. A disregard c^ competition. Whoever does a thing
best ou^t to be the one to do it. It is criminal to try to
get business away from another man — criminal because
one is then trying to lower for personal gain the condition
of one's fellow man — to rule by force instead of by intelli-
gence.

8. The putting of service before profit. Without a
profit, business cannot extend. There is nothing in-
herently wrong about making a profit. Well-conducted
business enterprise cannot fail to return a profit, but
profit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good
service. It cannot be the basis — ^it must be the result of
S service,

^ ^1 f 4. \Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high.
^"■J • i- It is the process of buying materials fairly and, with the
\>f smallest possible addition of cost, transforming those
K ' materials into a consxunable product and ^ving it to the
consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp dealing,
tend only to clog this progressionH

How all of this arose, how it has worked out, and how it
applies generally are the subjects of these chapters.

L(

CHAPTER I

The Beginnino or Business

•^N MAY 31, 1921, the Ford Motor Company
1 M turned out Car No. 5,000,000. It is out in my mu- .
"■^^, seum along with the gasoline buggy that I began AL^
work on thirty years before and which first ran satisfactor-
ily along in the spring of 1893. I was running it when the
bobolinks came to Dearborn and they always come on ,
April &id^7 There is all the difference in the world in the
appe^an^ of the two vehicles and almost as mudi dif-
ference in construction and materials, but in fimdamentals
the two are curiously alike — except that the old buggy has
on it a few wrinkles that we have not yet quite adopted
in OUT modem car. For that first car or buggy, even
though it had but two (flinders, would make twenty miles
an hour and run sixty miles on the three gallons of gas the
little tank held and is as good to-day as the day it was
built. The development in methods of manufacture and
in materials has been greater than the development in
basic design. The whole design has been r^ned; the pres-
ent Ford car, which is the "Model T," has four cylinders
and a self starter — ^it is in every way a more convenient
and an easier riding car. It is simpler than the first car.
But almost every point in it may be foimd also in the first
car. The changes have been brought about through ex-
perience in the making and not through any change in the
basic principle — which I take to be an important fact
demonstrating that, pven a good idea to sUcrt. m^,
it b better to concGitTttte on perfecting U, tiwn. Vk Vos^

22 MY LIFE AND WORK

around for a new idea. One idea at a time is about as
much as any one can handle.

yit was life on the farm that drove me into devising wa^
ancT means to better transportation. I was bom on July

.SO, 1863, on a farm at Dearborn, Michigan, and my earli-
j est recollection is that, considering the results, there was
too much work on the place. That is the way I still feel
about farmingTi There is a legend that my parents were
very poor and that the early days were hard ones. Cer-
tainly they were not rich, but neither were they poor. As
Michigan farmers went, we were prosperous. The house
in which I was bom is still standing, and it and the faint
are part of my present holding.

Here was too much hard hand labour on our own and
all other farms of the time. Even when very young I
suspected that much mij^t somehow be done in a better
way. That is what took me into mechanics — althou^
my mother always said that I was bom a mechanic. I
had a kind of workshop with odds and ends of metal for
tools before I had anything else. In those days we did
not have the toys of to-day ; what we had were home made.
My toys were all tools — they still are! And every frag-
ment of machinery was a treasure.
I The biggest event of those early years was meeting with
a road engine about eight miles out of Detroit one day
when we were driving to town. I was then twelve years
old. The second biggest event was getting a watch —
which happened in the same year. I remember that en*
gine as though I had seen it only yesterday, for it was the
first vehicle other than horse-drawn that I had ever seen.
It was intended primarily for driving threshing machines
and sawmills and was simply a portable en^ne and boiler
mounted on wheels with a water tank and coal cart trail-
ing behind. I had seen plenty of these engines hauled

wund by horses, but thia one had a chain, that made 8

THE BEGINNING OF BUSINESS 28

connection between the engine and the rear wheels of the

wagon-like frame on which the boiler was mounted. The

en^me was placed over the boiler and one man standing

on the platform behind the boiler shovelled coal, managed

the throttle, and did the steering. It had been made by

I^chols, Shepard & Company of Battle Creek. I found

that out at once. The engine had stopped to let us pass

with our horses and I was off the wagon and talking to the

engineer before my father, who was driving, knew what

I was up to. The engineer was very glad to explain the

whole affair. He was proud of it. He showed me how

the chain was disconnected from the propelling wheel

and a belt put on to drive other machinery. He told me

I that the engine made two hundred revolutions a minute

and that the chain pinion could be shifted to let the wagon

. stop while the engine was still running. This last is a

: feature which, although in different fashion, is incorpor-

[ ated into modem automobiles. It was not important

' with steam engines, which are easily stopped and started,

I but it became very important with the gasoline engine.
It was that en^e which took me into automotive trans-
\ portation. I tried to make models of it, and some years
' later I did make one that ran very well, but from the
\ time I saw that road en^e as a boy of twelve right for-
\ ward to to-day, my great interest has been in making a
L machine that would travel the roads. Driving to town I
[ always had a pocket full of trinkets — ^nuts, washers, and
[ odds and ends of machinery. Often I took a broken
; watch and tried to put it together. When I was thirteen
' I managed for the first time to put a watch together so that
, it would keep time. By the time I was fifteen I could do
I almost anything in watch repairing — although my tools ^
i Were of the crudest. \ There is an immense amount to be ~Jr
I learned simply by tinkering with things. It is nio^ v^sa.-
^ bfe to leam from books bow everytiung is made — odA. «b

%

24 MY LIFE AND WORK

real mechanic ought to know how nearly everything is
made. Machines are to a mechanic what books are to
a writer. He gets ideas from them, and if he has aiqr
brains he will apply those ideasTJ
' From the beginning I never could work up much in-
terest in the labour of farming. I wanted to have some-
thing to do with machinery. My father was not entirely
in sympathy with my bent toward mechanics. He
thought that I ought to be a farmer. When I left school
at seventeen and became an apprentice in the machine
shop of the Drydodc Engine Works I waa all but given up
for lost. I passed my apprenticeship without trouble —
that is, I was qualified to be a machinist long before my
three-year term had expired — and having a liking for
fine work and a leaning toward watches I worked nights
at repairing in a jewellery shop. At one period of those
early days I think that I must have had fully three hun-
dred watches. I thought that I could build a serviceable
watch for aroimd thirty cents and nearly started in the
business. But I did not because I figured out that watches
were not universal necessities, and therefore people gen-
erally would not buy them. Just how I reached that
surprising conclusion I am unable to state. I did not like
the ordinary jewellery and watchmaking work excepting
where the job was hard to do. Even then I wanted to
make something in quantity. It was just about the time
when the standard railroad time was being arranged. We
had formerly been on sun time and for quite a while, just
as in our present dayhght-saving days, the railroad time
differed from the local time. That bothered me a good
deal and so I succeeded in making a watch that kept both
times. It had two dials and it was quite a curiosity in
the neighbourhood. ?

In 1870 — that is, about four yeais aStesr I first saw that,
JVichols-Shepard machine — ^I managed to get a chance to

THE BEGINNING OF BUSINESS 25

niii one and whoi my apprenticeship was over I worked

with a local representalive of the Westinghouse Company

iji Schenectady as an expert in the setting up and repair

of their road en^es. The engine they put out was much

the same as the ^chols-Shepard engine excepting that

the en^e was up in front, the boiler in the rear, and the

power was applied to the back wheels by a belt. They

could make twelve miles an hour on the road even though

I the wlf -propelling feature was only an incident of the con-

i structi<m. They were sometimes used as tractors to pull

heavy loads and, if the owner also happened to be in

the threshing-machine business, he hitched his threshing

I machine and other paraphernalia to the engine in moving

/ from farm to farm. "What bothered me was the weight

and the cost. They weighed a couple of tons and were

{ far too e^qwnsive to be owned by other than a farmer with

I a great deal of land. They were mostly employed by

[ people who went into threshing as a business or who had

sawmills or some other line that required portable power.

I Even before that time I had the idea of making some

kind of a light steam car that would take the place <^

horses — ^more espedally, however, as a tractor to attend to

the excessively hard labour of ploughing. It occurred to

me, as I remember somewhat vaguely, that precisely the

same idea might be applied to a carriage or a wagon on the

road. A horseless carriage was a common idea. People

had been talking about carriages without horses for many

years back — in fact, ever since the steam en^e was in-

. vented — ^but the idea of the carriage at first did not seem

so practical to me as the idea of an en^e to do the harder

i farm work, and of all the work on the farm ploughing was

' the hardest. Our roads were poor and we had not the

habit of getting around. One of the most remarkable

' features of the automobile on the farm is the ^a^ ^3Q&\.VL

. \ua broadened the farmer's life. We simpV^ \adt Va

26 MT LIFE AND WORK

granted that unless the errand were urgent we would not
go to town, and I think we rarely made more than a trip
a week. In bad weather we did not go even that often.

Being a full-Sedged machinist and with a very fair work-
shop on the farm it was not difiScuIt for me to build a
steam wagon or tractor. In the building of it came the
idea that perhaps it might be made for road use. I fdt
perfectly certaini^at horses, considering all the bother of
attending them and the expense of feeding, did not earn
their keep. The obvious thing to do was to design and
build a steam engine that would be light enough to run
■an ordinary wagon or to pull a plough. I thought it
'more important first to develop the tractor. To lift
farm drudgery off flesh and blood and lay it on steel and
motors has been my most constant ambition. It was
circimistances that took me first into the actual manu-
facture of road cars. I found eventually that people
were more interested in something that would travel on
the road than in something that would do the work on the
farms. In fact, I doubt that the hght farm tractor could
have been introduced on the farm had not the farmer
had his eyes opened slowly but surely by the automobile.
But that is getting ahead of the story. I thought the
farmer would be more interested in the tractor.

I built a steam car that ran. It had a kerosene-heated
boiler and it developed plenty of power and a neat
control — ^which is so easy with a steam throttle. But the
boiler was datigerous. To get the requisite power with-
out too big and heavy a power plant required that the
en^e work under high pressure; sitting on a high-
pressure steam boiler is not altogether pleasant. To
make it even reasonably safe required an excess of weight
Ihat nullified the economy of the high pressure. For two
years I kept expeiimaiting with various sorts of boilers —
the eu^e and control problems were simple enough—;

THE BEGINNING OF BUSINESS 27

and then I definitely abfmdoned the whole idea of runiuDg
a road vehicle by steam. I knew that in England they had
what amounted to locomotives nmning on the roads
hauling lines of trailers and also there was no di£Bculty
in desgning a big steam tractor for use on a large farm.
But ours were not then English roads; they would have
stalled or racked to pieces the strongest and heaviest
road tractor. And anyway the manufacturing of a big
tractor which only a few wealthy farmers could buy did
not seem to me worth while.

But I did not give up the idea of a horseless carriage.
The work with the Westinghouse representative only
served to confirm the opinion I had formed that steam was
not suitable for light vehicles. That is why I stayed only
a year with that company. There was nothing more that
the big steam tractors and engines coiUd teach me and I
did not want to waste time on something that would lead
nowhere. A few years before — it was while I was an
apprentice — ^I read in the World of Science, an English
publication* of the "silent gas engine" which was then
coming out in England. I think it was the Otto en^e.
It ran with illuminating gas, had a single large cylinder,
and the power impulses being thus intermittent required
an extremdy heavy fly-wheel. As far as weight was
concerned it gave nothing like the power per pound of
metal that a steam en^e gave, and the use of illuminat-
ing gas seemed to dismiss it as even a possibility for road
use. It was interestiag to me only as all machinery was
interesting. I followed in the English and American
magazines which we got in the shop the development of the
engine and most particularly the hints of the possible
replacement of the illuminating gas fuel by a gas formed
by the vaporization of gasoline. The idea of gas engines
was by no means new, but this was the first time that a
really serious eSact had been made to put them on. tha

28 MY LIFE AND WORK

market. They were received with interest rather than
enthusiasm and I do not recall any one who thought that
the internal combustion engine could ever have more than
a limited use. All the wise people demonstrated con-
clusively that the engine could not compete with steam.
They never thought that it might carve out a career for
itself. That is the way with wise people — ^they are so
wise and practical that they always know to a dot just
why something cannot be done; they always know the
limitations. That is why I never employ an e:q>ert in
full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair
means I would endow the opposition with experts. They
would have so much good advice that I could be sure
they would do little work.

The gas engine interested me and I followed its prog-
ress, but only from curiosity, until about 1885 or 1886
when, Uie steam engine being discarded as the mo*
tive power for the carriage that I intended some day
to build, I had to look around for another sort of motive
power. In 1885 I repaired an Otto engine at the Eagle
Iron Works in Detroit. No one in town knew anything
about them. There was a rumour that I did and, although
I had never before been in contact with one, I undertook
and carried through-the job. That gave me a chance to
study the new engine at first hand and in 1887 1 built one
on the Otto four-cycle model just to see if I understood
the principles. *'Four cycle" means that the piston
traverses the cylinder four times to get one power im-
pulse. The first stroke draws in the gas, the second
compresses it, the third is the explosion or power stroke,
while the fourth stroke exhausts the waste gas. The little
model worked well enou^; it had a one-inch bore and a
three-inch stroke, operated with gasoline, and while it did
not develop much power, it was sH^tly lighter in pro-

tion than the engines bong offered commercially.

THE BEGINNING OF BUSINESS 2»

I gave it away later to a young man who wanted it for
something or other and whose name I have forgotten;
it was eventually destroyed. That was the beginning of
the work with the internal combustion engine.

I was then on the farm to which I had returned, more
because I wanted to experiment than because I wanted to
farm, and, now being an all-around machinist, I had a first-
class workshop to replace the toy shop of ewlier days.
My father offered me forty acres of timber land, provided
I gave up being a machinist. I agreed in a provisional
way, for cutting the timber gave me a chance to get
married. I fitted out a sawmill and a portable engine and
started to cut out and saw up the timber on the tract.
Some of the first of that liunber went into a cottage on
my new farm and in it we began our married life. It was
not a big hou^ — thirty-one feet square and only a story
and a half high — but it was a comfortable place. I added
to it my workshop, and when I was not cutting timber I was
working on the gas en^es — learning what they were and
how they acted. I read everything I could find, but the
greatest knowledge came from the work. A gas engine b
a mysterious sort of thing — it will not always go the way
it should. You can imagine how those first engines acted!

It was in 1890 that I began on a double-cylinder engine.
It was quite impractical to consider the single cylinder for
transportation purposes — ^the fly-wheel had to be entirety
too heavy. Between making the firat four-cycle engine of
the Otto type and the start on a double cylinder I had
made a great many experimental engines out of tubing.
I fairly knew my way about. The double cylinder I
thought could be applied to a road vehicle and my original
idea was to put it on a bicycle with a direct connection to the
crankshaft and allowing for the rear wheel of the bicycle
to act as the balance wheel. The speed was going to tft
varied only hy the throttle. I never carried ou\, ^\'s "^asi.

80 MY LIFE AND WORK

because it soon became apparent that the engine, gasoline
tank, and the various necessary controls would be entirely
too heavy for a bicycle. The plan of the two opposed
cylinders was that, while one would be delivering power
the other would be exhausting. This naturally would
not require so heavy a fly-wheel to even the application
of power. The work started in my shop on the farm.
Then I was offered a job with the Detroit Electric Com-
pany as an en^eer and machinist at forty-five dollars a
month. I took it because that was more money than the
farpi was bringing me and I had decided to get away trora
farm life anyway. The timber had all been cut. We
rented a house on Bagl^ Avenue* Detroit. The workshop
came along and I set it up in a brick shed at the back of
the house. During the first several months I was in the
nij^t shift at the electric-light plant — which gave me very
little time for es^wrimenting — but after that I was in the
day shift and every night and all of every Saturday night
I worked on the new motor. I cannot say that it waa
hard work. No work with interest is ever hard. I
always am certain of results. They always come if you

- work hard enou^. But it was a very great thing to have
my wife even took confident than I was. She has always
been that way.

I had to work from the ground up — ^that is, although
I knew that a niunber of people were working on horseless
carriages, I could not know what they were doing. The
hardest problems to overcome were in the making and
breaking of the spark and in the avoidance of excess
weight. For the transmission, the steering gear, and the
general construction, I could draw on my experience with
the steam tractors. In 1892 I completed my first motor
car, but it was not until the spring of the following year
that it ran to my satisfaclion. This first car had some-

£Mi^ of the appearance of a buggy. There were two

ITHE BEGINNING OF BUSINESS 81

cylinders with a two-and-a-half-inch bore and a six-inch
stroke set side by side and over tlie rear axle. I made them
out of the exhaust pipe of a steam engine that I had bought.
They developed about four horsepower. The power was
transmitted from the motor to the coxmtershaft by a belt
and from the coimtershaft to the rear wheel by a chain.
The car would hold two people, the seat being suspended
on posts and the foo(j^ on elliptical springs. There were two
speeds — one of ten and the other of twenty miles per hour —
obtained by shifting the belt, whidi was done by a clutch
lever in front of the driving seat. Thrown forward, the
lever put in the high speed; thrown back, the low speed;
with the lever upright the engine could run free. To start
the car it was necessary to turn the motor over by hand
with the clutch free. To stop the car one simply released
the clutch and applied the foot brake. There was no
reverse, and speeds other than those of the belt were
obtained by the throttle. I bought the iron work for the
frame of the carriage and also the seat and the springs.
The wheels were twenty-eight-inch wire bicycle wheels
with rubber tires. The balance wheel I had cast from a
pattern that I made and all of the more delicate* mecha-
nism I made myself. One of the features that I discovered
necessary was a compensating gear that permitted the
sfune power to be applied to each of the rear wheeb when
turning comers. The machine altogether weighed about
five hundred pounds. A tank under the seat held three
gallons of gasoline which was fed to the motor through a
small pipe and a mixing valve. The ignition was by
"electric spark. The original maclune was air-cooled — ■
or to be more accurate, the motor simply was not cooled
at all. I found that on a run of an hour or more the motor
heated up, and so I very shortly put a water jacket aroimd
the cylinders and piped it to a tank in the le&t ol ^<;^ cas
OTor the cylind&'s.

82 MY LIFE AND WORK

Nearly all of these vaiious features had been planned in
advance. That is the way I have always worked. I draw
a plan and work out every detail on the plan before
starting to build. For otherwise one will waste a great
deal of time in makeshifts as the work goes on and the
finished article will not have coherence. It will not be
rightly proportioned. Many inventors fail because they
do not distinguish between planning and experimenting.
The largest building difficulties that I had were in
obtaining the proper materials. Tlie next were with tools.
There had to be some adjustments and changes in details
of the design, but what held me up most was that I had
neither the time nor the money to search for the best
material for each part. But in the spring of 1893 the
machine was running to my partial satisfaction and
giving an opportunity further to test out the design and
material on the road. ^

CHAPTER n

What I Leabned About Business

MY "gasoline buggy" was the first and for a long
time the only automobile in Detroit. It was
considered to be something of a nuisance, for it
made a racket and it scared horses. Also it blocked traffic.
For if I stopped my machine anywhere in town a crowd
was around it before I could start up again. If I left it
alone even for a minute some inquisitive person always
tried to run it. Finally, I had to cany a chain and chain it
to a lamp post whenever I left it anywhere. And then
there was trouble with the police. I do not know quite
why, for my impression is that there were no speed-limit
laws in those days. Anyway, I had to get a special permit
from the mayor and thus for a time enjoyed the (hstinc-
tion of being the only licensed chauffeur in America. I ran
that machine about one thousand miles through 1895 and
1896 and then sold it to Charles Ainsley of Detroit for two
himdred dollars. That was my first sale. I had built the
car not to sell but only to experiment with. I wanted to
start another car. Ainsley wanted to buy. I could use
the money and we had no trouble in agreeing upon a price.
It was not at all my idea to make cars in any such petty
fashion. I was looking ahead to production, but before
that could come I had to have something to produce. It
does not pay to hurry. I started a second car in 1896;
it was much like the first but a little lighter. It also had
the belt drive which I did not give up until some lime
later; the belts were all right excepting in hot weathec.
That is why I later adopted gears. I leamed a g^e^ ^rsIl

84 MY LIFE AND WORK

from that car. Othea? in this countiy and abroad were
building cars by that time, and in 1805 I heard that a
Benz car from Geimany was on exhibition in Maey's
store in New York. I travelled down to look at it but It
had no features that seemed worth while. It also had the
belt drive, but it was mudi heavier than my car. I was
working for lightness; the foreign makers have never
seemed to appreciate what light weight means. I built
three cars in all in my home shop and all of them ran for
years in Detroit. I still have ^e first car; I bought it
back a few years later from a man to whom Mr. Ainsley
had sold it. I paid one hxmdred dollars for it.

During all this time I kept my position with the electric
company and gradually advanced to chief engineer at a
salary of one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month.
But my gas-engine experiments were no more popular
with the president of the company than my first me-
chanical leanings were with my father. It was not that
my employer objected to experiments — only to experi-
ments with a gas engine. I can still hear him say:

"Electricity, yes, that's the coming thing. But j

He had ample grounds for his skepticism — ^to use the
mildest terms. Practically no one had the remotest
notion of the future of the internal combustion engine,
while we were just on the edge of the great electrical
development. As with every comparatively new idea,
electricity was expected to do much more than we even now
have any indication that it can do. I did not see the use
of experimenting with dectricity for my purposes. A
road car coxdd not run on a trolley even if trolley wires had
been less expensive; no storage battery was in sight of a
weight that was practical. An electrical car had of
necessity to be limited in radius and to contain a large
juztoimt of motive machinery in proportion to the power

WHAT I LEABNED 85

exerted. Hiat is not to say that I held or now bold
dectrici^ cheaply; we have not yet begun to use electri-
atg^. But it has its place, and the internal combustion
en^e has its place. Neither can substitute for the
other — ^which is exceedingly fortunate.

I have the dynamo that I first had charge of at the
t>etroit Edison Company. When I started our Canadian
plant I bought it from an office building to which it had
been sold by the electric compai^, had it revamped a
little, and for several years it gave excellent service in the
Canadian plant. When we had to build a new pow^
plant, owing to the increase in business, I had the old
motor taken out to my museum — a room out at Dearborn
that holds a great number of my mechanical treasures.

The Edison Company offered me the general superin-
tendency of the company but only on condition tiiat I
would give up my gas engine and devote myself to some-
thing really useful. I had to choose between my job and
my automobile. I chose the automobile, or rather I gave
up the job — ^there was really nothing in the way of a
choice. For already I knew that the car was bound to be
a success. I quit my job on August 15} 1899, and went
into the automobile business.

It might be thought something of a step, for I had no
personal funds. What money was Left over froln living
was all used in experimenting. But my wife agreed that
the' automobile could not be given up — ^that we had to
maks or break. Ihere was no "demand" for automobiles
— ^there never is for a new article. They were accepted
in much the fashion as was more recently the airplane.
At first the "horseless carriage" was considered merely a
fireak notion and many wise people e^lained with par-
ticularity wIq^ it could never be more than a toy. No man
of money even thought of it as a commercial possibility.
Icannot ima^e why each new means oi tmQs^1^:^u£i&.

86 MY LIFE AND WORK

meets with such opposition. There are even those to-day
who shake their heads and talk about the luxury of the
automobile and only grudgingly admit that perhaps the
motor truck is of some use. But in the beginning there
was hardly any one who sensed that the automobile could
be a large factor in industry. The most optimistic hoped
only for a development akin to that of the bicycle.
Whoi it was found that an automobile really could go
and several makers started to put out cars, the immediate
query was as to which would go fastest. It was a curious
but natural development — ihaX radng idea. I never
thought anything of racing, but the pubUc refused to
consider the automobile in any light other than as a fast
toy. Therefore later we had to race. The industry was
held back by this initial racing slant, for the attention of
the makers was diverted to making fast rather than good
cars. It was a business for speculators.

A group of men of speculative turn of mind organized,
as soon as I left the electric company, the Detroit Auto-
mobile Company to exploit my car. I was the chief
en^eer and held a small amount of the stock. For three
years we continued making cars more or less on the model
of my first car. We sold very few of them; I could get no
support at all toward making better cars to be sold to the
public at large. The whole thought was to make to
order and to get the largest price possible for each car.
The main idea seemed to be to get the money. And
being without authority other than my ^igineering
position gave me, I found that the new company was not
a vehicle for realizing my ideas but merely a money-
making concern — ^that did not make much money. In
March, 1903, I resigned, determined never again to put
myself under orders. The Detroit Automobile Company
later became the Cadillac Company under the ownership
of the Xelands, who came in subsequently.

WHAT I LEARNED 37

1 rented a shop— a one-story brick shed — at 81 Park
^ace to continue my experiments and to find out what
business really was. I thought that it must be something
different from what it had proved to be in my first
adfentuie.

tChe year from 190S until the formation of the Frad
Motor Company was practically one of investigation.
In my little one-room brick shop I worked on the develop- V|
ment of a four-cylinder motor and on the outside I tried f
to find out what business really was and whether it
needed to be quite so selfish a scramble for money as it
seemed to be from my first short experienceT7From the
period of the first car, which I have describea, until the
formation of my present company I built in all about
twenty-five cars, of which nineteen or twenty were built
with the Detroit Automobile Company. The automobile
had passed from the initial stage where the fact that it
could run at all was enough, to the stage where it had to
show speed. Alexander Winton of Cleveland, the founder
of the Winton car, was then the track champion of the
country and willing to meet all comers. I designed
a two-cylinder oiclosed engine of a more compact type
than I had before used, fitted it into a skeleton chassis,
found that I could make speed, and arranged a race with
TCnton. We met on the Grosse Point track at Detroit.
I beat him. That was my first race, and it brought
advertising of the only kind that people cared to read.

The pubHc thought nothing of a car unless it made
speed — unless it beat other racing cars. My ambition to
build the fastest car in the worid led me to plan a four-
cylinder motor. But of that more later.

The most surprising feature of business as it was
conducted was the large attention given to finance and the
small attention to service. That seemed to me, lo W.
reversu^ the natural process ^hich is l\ia,\. XJbr ■mcrweg

88 my; life and wokk

should come as ihe result of work and not before the work.
The second feature was the general indifference to better
methods of manufacture as long as whatever was dcme
got by and took the money. In other words, an article
apparently was not built with reference to how greatly It
could serve tie public but with reference solely to howmuch
money could be had for it — and that without any particu-
lar care whether the customer was satisfied. To sell him
was enough. A dissatisfied customer was regarded not
as a man whose trust had been violated, but either as a
nuisance or as a possible source of more money in fixing
up the work which ought to have been done correctly in
the first place. For instance, in automobiles there was not
much concern as to what happened to the car once it had
been sold. How much gasoline it used per mile was of no
great moment; how much service it actually gave did not
matter; and if it broke down and had to have parts
replaced, then that was just hard luck for the owner. It
was considered good business to sell parts at the highest
possible price on the theory that, since the man had already
bought the car, he simply had to have the part and would
be willing to pay for it.

The automobile business was not on what I would call
an honest basis, to say nothing of being, from a manu-
facturing standpoint, on a sdentifig. basis, but it was no
worse than business in general. {That was the period,
it may be remembered, in whicE" many corporations
were being floated and financed. The bankers, who
before then had confined themselves to the railroads,
, got into industry. My idea was then and still is that if a
\ man did his work well, the price he would get for that
work, the profits and all financial matters, would care
for themselves and that a business ought to start small
and build itself up and out of its eamin^^ If there are
f earnings then that is a signal to the owner that he is

WHAT I LEARNED m

wasUng hb time and does not bdong in that business.
I have never foxuld it nectary to diange those ideas,
but I discovered that this simple formula of doing good
work and getting paid for it was supposed to be slow for
moduli business, llie plan at that time most in favour
was to start off with the lai^est possible capitalization
and then sell all the stock and all the bonds that could be
sold. Whatever money happened to be left over after
all the stock and bond-sdiing expenses and promoters,
chaises and all that* went grudgingly into the foundation
of the bu^ess. A good business was not one that did
good work and earned a fair profit. A good business was
one that would ^ve the opportunity for the floating of a
large amount of stocks and bonds at high prices. It was
the stocks and bonds, not the work, that mattered.
I could not see how a new business or an old business could
be expected to be able to charge into its product a great
big bond interest and then sell the product at a fair price.
I have never been able to see that.

I have never been able to understand on what theory
the origmal investment of money can be chai^ied against
a business. Those men in business who call themselves
financiers say that money is "worth" 6 per cent, or 5 per
cent, or some other per cent., and that if a business has one
hundred thousand dollars invested in it, the man who
made the investment is entitled to charge an interest
payment on the money, because, if instead of putting that
money into the business he had put it into a savings bank
or into certain securities, he could have a certain fixed
return. Therefore they say that a proper charge against
the operating expenses of a business is the interest on
this money. This idea is at the root of many business
failures and most service failures. Money is not worth a
particular amoimt. As money it is not worth anythin:^,
tar it will do nothing of itself. The oily \isi& ol tocjos^ 'va

'^0 MY LIFE AND WORK

to buy tools to work with or the product of tools. There-
fore mon^ is worth what it will help you to produce or
buy and no more. If a man thinks that his money will
earn 5 per cent, or 6 per cent, he ought to place it where he
can get that return, but money placed in a business is
not a charge on the business — or, rather, should not be.
It ceases to be money and becomes, or should become, an
engine of production, and it is therefore worth what it
produces — and not a fixed sum according to some scale
that has no bearing upon the particular business in which
the money has been placed. Any return should come
after it has produced, not before.

Business men believed that you could do anything by
"financing" it. If it did not go through on the first
financing then the idea was to "refinance. " The process
of "refinancing" was simply the game of sending good
money after bad. In the majority of cases the need of
refinancing arises from bad management, and the e£fect
of refinancing is simply to pay the poor managers to
keep up their bad management a little longer. It is
merely a postponement of the day of judgment. This
makeshift of refinancing is a device of speculative finan-
ciers. Their money is no good to them imless theycan
connect it up with a place where real work is being done,
and that they cannot do unless, somehow, that place is
poorly managed. Thus, the speculative financiers delude
themselves that they are putting their money out to use.
They are not; they are putting it out to waste.
\I determined absolutely that never would I join a
company in which finance came before the work or in
which bankers or financiers had a part. And further that,
if there were no way to get started in the kind of business
that I thought could be managed in the interest of the
public, then I simply would not get started at alT] For
^ '"•rt experience, together with what I saw going

WHAT I LEAHNED 41

ou around me, was quite enough proof that business us a
mere money-making game was not worth giving much
thought to and was distinctly no place for a man who
wanted to accomplish anything. Also it did not seem
to me to be the way to make money. I have yet to have
it demonstrated that it is the way. For the only founda-
tion of teal business is service.

A manufacturer is not through with his customer when
a sale is completed. He has then only started with his
customer. In the case of an automobile the sale of the
machine is only something in the nature of an introduction.
If the machine does not give service, then it is better for
the manufactiuer if he never had the introduction, for
he will have the worst of all advertisements — a dissatisfied
customer. Th^re was something more than a tendency
in the early days of the automobile to regard the selling
of a machine as the real accompUshment and that there-<
after it did not matter what happened to the buyer, .
That is the shortsighted salesman-on-commission attitude.
If a salesman is paid only for what he sells, it is not to be
expected that he is going to eisrt any great effort on a
customer out of whom no more commission is to be made.
And it is right on this point that we later made the largest
selling argument for the Ford. The price and the quality
of the car would undoubtedly have made a market, and
a large market. We went beyond that. A man who
bought one of our cars was in my opinion entitled to
continuous use of that car, and therefore if he had a
breakdown of any kind it was our duty to see that his
madiine was put into shape again at the earliest possible
moment. In the success of the Ford car the early
provision of service was an outstanding element. Most
of the e^)ensive cars of that period were ill provided with
service stations. If your car broke down "you ^^aA \a
^tpaid on the locaJ repair man — when you were e!tl^A^\«S^

42 MY LIFE AND WORK

to depend upon tlie manufacturer. If the local repair
man were a forehanded sort of a person, keeping on hand
a good stock of parts (although on many of the cars the
parts were not interchangeable), the owner was lucky.
But if the repair m^i were a shiftless person, with an
inadequate knowledge of automobiles and an inordinate |
desire to make a good thing out of every car that came into
his place for repairs, then even a shght breakdown meant
weeks of laying up and a whopping big repair bill that had
to be paid before the car could be taken away. The repair
men were for a time the largest menace to the automobile
industry. Even as late as 1910 and 1911 the owner of an
automobile was regarded as essentially a rich man whose
money ought to be taken away from him. We met that
situation squarely and at the very beginning. We would
not have our distribution blocked by stupid, greedy men.
That is getting some years ahead of the story, but it is
control by finance that breaks up service because it looks
to the immediate dollar. If the first consideration is to
earn a certain amount of money, then, unless by some
stroke of luck matters are going especially well and there
is a surplus over for service so that the operating men may
have a chance, future business has to be sacrificed for the
dollar of to-day.

And also I noticed a tendency among many men in
business to feel that their lot was hard — ^they worked
against a day when they might retire and live on an
income — get out of the strife. Life to them was a battle
to be ended as soon as possible. Tliat was another point
I could not understand, for as I reasoned, life is not a
battle except with our own tendency to sag with the
downpull of "gettmg settled." If to petrify is success,
all one has to do is to humour the lazy side of the mind;
but if to grow b succesS',''tlfeh one must wake up anew
evay moming and keep awake all day. I saw great

WHAT I LEABNEB 4A

businesses become but the ghost of a name because some-
one thought they could be managed just as they were
always managed, and though the management may have
been most excellent in its day, its excellence consisted
in its alertness to its day, and not in slavish following of
its yesterdays. life, as I see it, is not a location, but
a journey. Even the man who most feels himself "settled"
is not settled — he is probably sagging back. Everything
is in flux, and was meant to be. Life flows. We may
live at the same number of the street, but it is never the
same man who hves there.

And out of the delusion that hfe is a battle that may
be lost by a false move grows, I have noticed, a great love
for regularity. Men fall into the half-alive habit.
Seldom does the cobbler take up with the new-fangled
way of soling shoes, and seldom does the artisan willingly
take up with new methods in his trade. Habit conduces
to a certain inertia, and any distxu-bance of it affects the
mind like trouble. It will be recalled that when a study
was made of shop methods, so that the workmen might
be taught to produce with less useless motion and fatigue,
it was most opposed by the workmen themselves.
"Hiough they suspected that it was simply a game to get
more out of them, what most irked them was that it
interfered with the well-worn grooves in which they had
become accustomed to move. Business men go down with
their businesses because they like the old way so well they
cannot bring themselves to change. One sees them all
about — ^men who do not know that yesterday is past,
and who woke up this morning with their last year's ideas.
It could almost be written down as a formula that when
a man begins to think that he has at last found his method
he iiad better begin a most searching examination of
himself to see whether some part of his brain. ha& ncA. i^(:m&
to sleep. There is a subtle danger m a 'maxi ^" \v\T^vt\^

44 MY LIFE AND WORK

that he is ** fixed" for life. It indicates that the next jolt
of the wheel of progress is going to fling him off.

There is also the great fear of being thought a fooL
So many men are afraid of being considered fools. I
grant that public opinion is a powerful police influence
for those who need it. Perhaps it is true that the
majority of men need the restraint of public opinion.
Public opinion may keep a man better than he would
otherwise be — ^if not better morally, at least better as
far as his social desirabihty is concerned. But it is not
a bad thing to be a fool for righteousness* sake. The best
of it is that such fools usuaUy hve long enough to prove
that they were not fools — or the work they have begun
lives long enough to prove they were not foolish.

The money influence — ^the pressingto make a profit on an
"investment" — and its consequent neglect of or skimping
of work and hence of service showed itself to me in many
ways. It seemed to be at the bottom of most troubles. It
was the cause of low wa^io^for without well-directed work
high wages cannot be paiiqB^ And if the whole attention
is not given to the work it dibnot be well directed. Most
men want to be free to work;under the system'in use they
could not be free to work. During my first experience
I was not free — I could not give full play to my ideas.
Everything had to be planned to make money; the last
consideration was the work. And the most curious part
of it all was the insistence that it was the money and not
the work that counted. It did not seem^to strike any one
as illogical that money should be put ahead of work —
even though everyone had to admit that the profit had to
come from the work. The desire seemed to be to find
a short cut to money and to pass over the obvious short
cut — which is through the work.

Take competition; I found that competition was sup-
■ '' be a menace and that a gpod manager circum-

WHAT I LEARNED 46

vented his competitors by getting a monopoly through
artificial means. Hie idea was that there were only a
certain number of people who could buy and that it was
necessary to get their trade ahead of someone else. Some
will remember that later many of the automobile manu-
facturers entered into an association under the Selden
Patent just so that it might be legally possible to control
the price and the output of automobiles. They had the
same idea that so many trades unions have — the ridicu-
lous notion that more profit can be had doing less work
than more. The plan, I beheve, is a very antiquated one.
I could not see then and am still imable to see that there
is not always enough for the man who does his work; time
spent in fighting competition is wasted; it had better
be spent in doing the work. There are always enough
people ready and anxious to buy, provided you supply
what they want and at the proper price — and this appUes
to personal services as well as to goods.

During this time of reflection I Vas far from idle. We
were going ahead with a four-oylinder motor and the
building of a pair of big racing cars. I had plenty of time, i
for I never left my business. I do not believe a man can
ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day
and dream of it by night. It is nice to plan to do one's
work in office hours, to take up the work in the morning,
to drop it in the evening — and not have a care until the
next morning. It is perfectly possible to do that if one
is so constituted as to be willing through all of his life to
accept direction, to be an employee, possibly a responsible
employee, but not a director or manager of anything. A
manual labourer must have a limit on his hours, otherwise
he will wear himself out. If he intends to remain always a
manual labourer, then he should forget about his work
when the whistle blows, but if he intends to go icr««c^wiA
do anything, tie whistle is only a ^gnal to sitoA. NJaaJi..-

%

46 MY LIFE AND WOKK

ing over the day's work in order to discover how it might
be done better.

The man who has the largest capacity for work and
thought is the man who is bound to succeed. I cannot
pretend to say, because I do not know, whether the man
who works always, who never leaves his business, who is
absolutely intent upon getting ahead, and who therefore
does get ahead — is happier than the man who keeps oflBce
hoitts, both for his brain and his hands. It is not necessary
for any one to decide the question. A ten-horsepower
engine will not pull as much as a twenty. The man who
keeps brain office hours limits his horsepower. If he
is satisfied to pull only the load that he has, well and good,
that is his affair — but he must not complain if another
who has increased his horsepower pulls more than he
does. \ Leisure and work bring different results. If a
man wants leisure and gets it — ^then he has no cause to
complain. But he cannot have both leisure and the
results of wor^

Concretely, what I most realized about business in that
year — and I have been learning more each year without
finding it necessary to change my first conclusions — ^is
this:

(1) That finance is given a place ahead of work and
therefore tends to kill the work and destroy the funda-
mental of service.

(2) That thinking first of money instead of work brings
on fear of failure and this fear blocks eveiy avenue of
business — it makes a man afraid of competition, of chang-
ing his methods, or of doing anything which might change
his condition.

(3) That the way is clear for any one who thinks first
of service — of doing the work in tlie best possible way.

CHAPTER m

Stabting the Real Business

IK THE little brick shop at 81 Park Place I had ample
opportunity to work out the design and some of the
methods of manufacture of a new car. Even if it
were possible to organize the exact kind of corporation
that I wanted— one in which doing the work well and suit-
ing the public woidd be controlling factors — ^it became ap-
parent that I never could produce a thoroughly good
motor car that might be sold at a low price under the ex-
isting cut-and-tiy manufacturing methods.

Everybody knows that it is always possible to do a
thing better the second time. I do not know why
manufacturing should not at that time have generally
recognized this as a basdc fact — ^unless it might be tiiat the
manufactiuvrs were in such a hurry to obtain something
to sell thtat they did not taketime for adequate preparation.
Making "to order" instead of making in volume is,
I suppose, a habit, a tradition, that has descended from
the old handicraft days. Ask a hundred people how they
want a particular article made. About eighty will not
know; they will leave it to you. Fifteen will think that
they must say something, while five will really have
preferences and reasons. The ninety-five, made up of
those who do not know and admit it and the fifteen who
do not know but do not admit it, constitute the real
market for any product. The five who want something
special may or may not be able to pay the price for special
work. If they have the price, they can get the woi:k»
but they constitute a special and Unuted maxVeX.. Qll^^

47

48 MY LIFE AND WORK

ninety-five perhaps ten or fifteen will pay a price for
quality. Of those remaining, a number will buy solely
on price and without regard to quality. Their numbers
are thinning with eadi day. Buyers are leaming how to
buy. The majority will consider quality and buy the
biggest dollar's worth of quality. If, therefore, you
discover what will ^ve this 95 per cent, of people the
best all-round service and then arrange to manufacture at
the very highest quality and sell at the very lowest price,
you will be meeting a demand which is so large that it
may be called universal.

This is not standardizing. The use of the word
"standardizing" is very apt to lead one into trouble, for
it implies a certain freezing of design and method and usu-
ally works out so tiiat the manufacturer selects whatever
article he ciui the most easily make and sell at the highest
profit. The public is not considered either in the design
or in the price. The thought behind most standardization
is to be able to make a larger profit. The result is that
withi the economies which are inevitable if you make only
one thing, a larger and larger profit is continually being had
by the manufacturer. His output also becomes larger —
his facilities produce more— ^ind before he knows it his
markets are overflowing with goods which will not sell.
These goods would sell if the manufacturer would take a
lower price for them. There is always buying power
present — but that buying power will not always respond
to reductions in price. If an article has been sold at too
high a price and then, because of stagnant business, the
price is suddenly cut, the response is sometimes most
disappointing. And for a very good reason. The public
is wary. It thinks that the price-cut is a fake and it sits
around waiting for a real cut. We saw much of that last
year. If, on the contrary, the economies of making are
translerred at once to the price and if it is well known that

STARTING THE REAL BUSINESS 40

such is the policy of the manufacturer, the public will
have confidence in him and will respond. They will trust
him to give honest value. So standardization may seem
bad business unless it carries with it the plan of constantly
reducing the price at which the article is sold. And the
price has to be reduced (this is very important) because of
the manufacturing economies that have come about and
not because the falling demand by the public indicates
that it is not satisfied with the price. The public should
always be wondering how it is possible to give so much fop
the money.

Standardization (to use the word as I understand it)
is not just taking one's best seUing article and concentrat-
ing on it. It is planning day and night and probably for
years, first on something which will best suit the public
and then on how it should be made. The exact processes
of manufacturing will develop of themselves. Then, if
we shift tiie manufacturing from the profit to the service
basis, we shall have a real business in which the profits will
be all that any one could desire.

All of this seems self-evident to me. It is the logical
basis of any business that wants to serve 95 per
cent, of the community. It is the logical way in which
the commimity can serve itself. I cannot comprehend
why all business does not go on this basis. All that has
to be done in order to adopt it is to overcome the habit
of grabbing at the nearest dollar as though it were the
only dollar in the world. The habit has already to an
extent been overcome. All the large Mid successful retail
stores in this coimtry are on the one-price basis. The only
further step required is to throw overboard the idea of
pricing on what the traffic will bear and instead go to the
common-sense basis of pricing on what it costs to manu-
facture and then reducing the cost of manufacture. If i\u&
design of the product has been sufficieu^^ ^uda.«&^)^^:&-

ao MY LIFE AKD WORK

changes in it will come very slowly. But changes in
manufacturing processes will come very rapidly and wholly
naturally. That has been our experience in everything
we have imdertaken. How natiu-ally it has all come
about, I shall later outline. The point that I wish to im-
press here is that it is impossible to get a product on whidi
one may concentrate unless an unlimited amount of study
is given beforehand. It is not just an afternoon's work.

These ideas were forming with me during this year of
experimenting. Most of the experimenting went into
the building of racing cars. The idea ia those days was
that a first-class car ought to be a racer. I never really
thou^t mudi of racing, but following the bicycle idea,
the manufacturers had the notion that winning a race on a
track told the pubhc something about the merits of an
automobile — although I can hardly imagine any test that
would tell less.

But, as the others were doing it, I, too, had to do it.
In 1903, with Tom Cooper, I built two cars solely for speed.
They were quite alike. One we named the "999" and
the other the "Arrow." If an automobile were going
to be known for speed, then I was going to make an auto-
mobile that would be known wherever speed was known.
These were. I put in four great big cylinders giving
80 H.P. — ^which up to that time had been imheard of.
The roar of those cylinders alone was enough to half kill
a man. There was only one seat. One life to a car was
enough. I tried out the cars. Cooper tried out the cars.
We let them out at full speed, I cannot quite describe the
sensation. Going over Niagara Falls would have been
but a pastime after a ride in one of them. I did not want
to take the responsibiUty of racing the " 999 " which we put
up first, neither did Cooper. Cooper said he knew a man
who lived on speed, that nothing could go too fast for him.
He wired to Salt Lake City and on came a professional

STARTING THE REAL BUSINESS »1

bicycle rider named Barney Oldfield. He had never
driven a motor car, but he liked the idea of trying it.
He said he would try anything once.

It took us only a week to teach him how to drive. The
man did not know what fear was. AH that he had to
learn was how to control the monster. Controlling the
fastest car of to-day was nothing as compared to controlling
that car. The steering wheel had not yet been thought of.
All the previous cars that I had built simply had tillers.
On this one I put a two-handed tiller, for holding the car
in line required all the strength of a strong man. The race
for which we were working was at three miles on the
Grosse Point track. We kept our cars as a dark horse.
We left the predictions to the others. The tracks then
were not scientifically banked. It was not known how
much speed a motor car could develop. No one knew
better than Oldfield what the turns meant and as he took
his seat, while I was cranking the car for the start, he
remarked cheerily: "Well, this chariot may kill me, but
they will say afterward that I was going like hell when
she took me over the bank. "

And he did go : He never dared

to look around. He did not shut off on the curves.
He simply let that car go — and go it did. He was about
half a mile ahead of the next man at the end of the race!

The "999" did what it was intended to do: It ad-
vertised the fact that I could build a fast motorcar.
A week after the race I formed the Ford Motor Company.
I was vice-president, designer, master mechanic, superin-
tendent, and general manager. The capitalization of the
company was one hundred thousand dollars, and of this I
owned 25^ per cent. The total amount subscribed in cash
was about twenty-eight thousand dollars — ^which is the
only money that the company has ever received for the
capital fund from other than operatioiis. 'Vn.^e.Ni^^isi.-

?2 MY LIFE AND WORK

ing I thought that it was possible, notwithstanding my
former experience, to go forward with a company in which
I owned less than the controlling share. I very shortly
found I had to have control and therefore in 1906, with
fxmds that I had earned in the company, I bought enough
stock to bring my holdings up to 51 per cent, and a little
later bought enough more to give me S8}4 per cent.
The new equipment and the whole progress of the company
have always been financed out <rf earnings. In 1919 my
son Edsel purchased the remaining 41^ per c»it of the stock
because certain of the minority stockholders disagreed
with my policies. For these shares he paid at the rate
of $1S,500 for each $100 par and in all paid about seventy-
five millions.

The original company and its equipment, as may be
gathered, were not elaborate. We rented Strelow's car-
penter shop on Mack Avenue. In making my designs
I had also worked out the methods of making, but, since
at that time we could not afford to buy machinery, the
entire car was made according to my designs, but by
various manufacturers, and about all we did, even in the
way of assembling, was to put on the wheels, the tires, and
the body. That would really be the most economical
method of manufacturing if only one could be certain that
all of the various parts would be made on the manufactur-
ing plan that I have above outlined. The most economical
manufactiuing of the future will be that in which the
whole of an article is not made imder one roof — imless, of
course, it be a very simple article. The modem — or
better, the future — ^metiiod is to have each part made where
it may best be made and then assemble the parts into a
complete unit at the points of consumption. That is the
method we are now following and expect to extend.'
It would make no difference whether one company or one
*»^'«'*^"aJ OTpned all the factories fabricating the com-

STAETING THE REAL BUSINESS 6S

ponent parts of a single product, or whether such part were
made in our independently owned factoiy, if orJy all
adopted the same service methods. If we can buy as good
a part as we can make ourselves and the supply is ample
and the price ri^t, we do not attempt to make it ours^ves
— or, at any rate, to make more than an emergency supply.
In fact, it migbt be better to have the ownership widely
scattered.

I had been experimenting principally upon the cutting
down of weight. £a%ss weight kills any self-propelled
vehicle. There are a lot of fool ideas about wei^t.
It is queer, when you come to think of it, how some fool
terms get into cxurent use. There is the phrase "heavy-
weight" as appHed to a man's mental apparatus! What
*ioes it mean? No one wants to be fat and heavy of body
— ^then why of head? For some clxunsy reason we have
come to confuse strength with weight. The crude methods
of early building undoubtedly had much to do with this.
The old ox-cart weighed a ton — and it had so much
weight that it was weak! To carry a few tons of hu-
manity from New York to Chicago, the railroad builds
a train that weighs many hundred tons, and the result
is an absolute loss of real strength and the extrava-
gant waste of untold millions in the form of power.
The law of diminishing returns begins to operate at the
point where strength becomes weight. Weight may be
desirable in a steam roller but nowhere else. Strength
has nothing to do with weight. The mentality of the
man who does things in the world is agile, light, and
strong. The most beautlfiJ things in the world are
I those from which all excess weight has been eliminated.
Strength is never just weight — either in men or things.
Whenever any one suggests to me that I might increase
woght or add a part, I look into decreasing- Niei^X. ?:sA
diminatiiig a part.' The car that I desigoed "waa \i!^D\fct

S4 MY LIFK AND WORK

than any car that had yet been made. It would have
been hghter if I had known how to make it so — later I
got the materials to make the tighter car.

In our first year we built "Model A," selling the
runabout for eight hundred and fifty doUars and the
tonneau for one hundred dollus more. This model had a
two-cylinder opposed motor developing eight horsepower.
It had a chain drive, a seventy-two inch wheel base —
whidi was supposed to be long — and a fuel capacity of
five gallons. We made and sold 1,708 cars in the first
year. That is how well the pubUc responded.

Every one of these "Model A's" has a history. Take

No. 420. Colonel D. C. Collier of California bought it in

1904. He used it for a couple of years, sold it, and bought

a new Ford. No. 420 changed hands frequently imtil 1007

when it was bought by one Edmund Jacobs living near

Ramona in the heart of the mountains. He drove it for

several years in the rou^est kind of work. Then he

bought a new Ford and sold his old one. By 1915 No.420

had passed into the hands of a man named Cantello who

took out the motor, hitched it to a water pump, rigged up

shafts on the chassis and now, while the motor chugs away

"^^ at the pumping of water, the chassis drawn by a biuro acts

>$' as a buggy. The moral, of course, is that you can dissect a

^ Ford but you cannot kill it.

- ^ In our first advertisement we said:

Our purpose is to construct and maiket an automobile specially
designed for everyday wear and tear — business, professional, and
family use; an automobile whicli will attain to a sufficient speed to
satisfy the average person without acquiring any of those breakneck
velocities which are so universally condemned; a machine which will
be admired by man, woman, and child alike for its compactness, its
simplicity, its safety, its all-around convenience, and — ^last but not
least — its exceedingly reasonable price, which places it within the
reach of many thousands who could not think of pairing the com-
pai^tivefy tabaloaa pncea asked lev most machiuM,

[ STARTING THE REAL BUSINESS 55

And these are the points we ^nphasized:

Good material.

Simplicity — most of the cars at that time required <»n-
siderable skill in their management.
j- The engine.

The ignition — which was furnished by two sets of six
dry cell batteries.

The automatic oiling.

The simplicity and the ease of control of the trans-
mission, which was of the planetaiy type.
i The workmanship.

We did not make the pleasure appeal. We never have.
In its first advertising we showed that a motor car was a
utility. We said:

I We often hear quoted the old proverb, "Time is mon^'— -and yet
how few business and professional men act as if they really believed its
truth.
Men idio ue constantly complaining of shortage of time and lar

j menting the fewness of days in the week — men to whom every five

inunutes wasted means a dollar thrown away — men to whom five
minutes' delay sometimes means the loss of many dollars — will yet
depend on the haphazard, uncomfortable, and limited means of trans-
I portation afforded by street cars, etc., when the investment of aa
exceedingly moderate amn in the purchase of a perfected, efficient,
h^-grade automobile would cut out anxiety and unpunctuality and
I»oTide a luxurious means of travel ever at your beck and caJl.
Always ready, always sure.
Built to save you time and consequent money.
i' Built to take you anywhere you want to go and bring you back
i again on time.

Built to add to your reputation for punctuality; to keep your
I customers good-humoured and in a buying mood.
Built for business or pleasure — ^just as you say.
I Built also for the good of your health — to carry you "jarlessly"
7 over any kind of half decent roads, to refresh your brain w>th the
I luxury of much "out-doomess" and your lungs with the "tonic of
I ttmics" — the right kind of atmosphere.

I It is your say, too, when it comes to speed. You can — if '^%
I dioose — loiter lingering through shady avemxea ot ■3011 CKa. -"gKaa

56 MY LIFE AND WORK

down on tlie foot-lever until all the scenery looks alike to you and you
have to keep your eyes skinned to count the milestones as they pass.

I am giving the gist of this advertisement to show tltat,
from the beginning, we were looking to providing service —
we never bothered with a "sporting car. "

The business went along almost as by ma^c. The
cars gained a reputation for standing up. They were
tough, they were simple, and they were well made. I
was working on my design for a universal single model
but I had not settled the designs nor had we the money
to build and equip the proper kind of plant for manu-
facturing. I had not the money to discover the very best
and lightest materials. We still had to accept the mate-
rials that the market offered — ^we got the best to be had
but we had no facilities for the scientific investigation of
materials or for original research.

My associates were not convinced that it was possible
to restrict our cars to a single model. The automobile
trade was following the old bicycle trade, in which every
manufacturer thought it necessary to bring out a new
model each year and to make it so imlike all previous
models that those who had bought the former models
would want to get rid of the old and buy the new. That
was supposed to be good business. It is the same idea
that women submit to in their clothing and hats. Tliat
is not service — it seeks only to provide something new,
not something better. It is extraordinary how firmly
rooted is the notion that business — continuous selling —
depends not on satisfying the customer once and for all,
but on first getting his money for one article and then
persuading him he ou^t to buy a new and different one.
The plan which I then had in the back of my head but
to which we were not then sufficiently advanced to
^ve expres^on, was that, when a model was settled upon

STAKTING THE REAL BUSINESS 5%

then eveiy improvement on that model should be inter-
changeable with the old model, so that a car should never
get out of date. It is my ambition to have every piece of
machinery, or other non-consumable product that I
turn out, so strong and so well made that no one ought
ever to have to buy a second one. A good machine of any
kind ou^t to last as long as a good watch.

In the second year we scattered our enerji^es among
three models. We made a four-cylinder touring car,
"Model B," whidi sold for two thousand dollars; "Model
C," which was a slightly improved "Model A" and sold
at fifty dollars more than the former price; and "Model
F," a touring car which sold for a thousand dollars.
That is, we scattered our energy and increased prices —
and therefore we sold fewer cars than in the first year.
The sales were 1,695 cars.

That "Model B " — ^the first four-cylinder car for general
road use — ^had to be advertised. "Winning a race or
making a record was then the best kind of adverUsing.
So I fixed up the "Arrow," the twin of the old "999" —
in fact practically remade it — and a week before the New
York Automobile show I drove it myself over a siurveyed
mile straightaway on the ice. I shall never forget that
race. The ice seemed smooth enough, so smooth that if
I had called off the trial we should have secured an
immense amoimt of the wrong kind of advertising, but
instead of being smooth, that ice was seamed with fissures
which I knew were going to mean trouble the moment I
got up speed. But there was nothing to do but go throu^
with the trial, and I let the old "Arrow" out. At every
fissure the car leaped into tiie air. I never knew how it
was coming down. When I wasn't in the air, I was
skidding, but somehow I stayed top side up and on the
course^ maldng a record that went all over the wotldl
That put "Model B" on the majy— but Tiot eaow^ csa.

fig MY LIFE AND WORK

to overcome the price advances. No stunt and no adver-
tising will sell an article for any length of time. Business
is not a game. The moral is coming.

Our little wooden shop had, with the business we were
doing, become totally inadequate, and in 1906 we took out
of our working capital sufficient funds to build a three-story
plant at the comer of Piquette and Beaubien streets —
which for the first time gave us real manufactur-
ing facihties. We began to make and to assemble quite
a number of the parts, although still we were principally
an assembling shop. In 1905-1906 we made only two
models — one the four-cylinder car at $S,000 and another
touring car at $1,000, both being the models of the pre-
vious year — and our sales dropped to 1,599 cars.

Some sMd it was because we had not brought out new
modeb. I thought it was because our cars were too
expensive — they did not appeal to the 95 per cent. I
changed the poUcy in the next year — Shaving first acquired
stock control. For 1906-1907 we entirely left off making
touring cars and made three models of runabouts and
roadsters, n<Hie of which differed materially from the
other in manufacturing process or in component parts,
but were somewhat Afferent in appearance. The big
thing was that the cheapest car sold for $600 and the most
expensive for only $750, and right there came the complete
demonstration of what price meant. We sold 8,423 cars —
nearly five times as many as in our biggest previous year.
Our banner week was that of May 15, 1908, when we
assembled 311 cars in six working days. It almost
swamped our facilities. The foreman had a tallyboard on
which he chalked up each car as it was finished Mid turned
over to the testers. The tallyboard was hardly equal to
the task. On one day in the following June we assembled
an even one hundred cars.

In the next year we departed from the programme

STARTING THE REAL BUSINESS ««

tliat had been so successful and I designed a big car-
fifty horsepower, six cylinder — that would bum up the.
roads. We continued making our small cars, but the 1907
panic and the diversion to the more expensive model cut
down the sales to 6,398 cars.

We had been through an experimenting period of five
years. The cars were beginning to be sold in Europe.
The business, as an automobile business then went, was
considered extraordinarily prosperous. We had plenty of
mcmey. Since the first year we have practically always
had iJenty of money. We sold for cash, we did not borrow
money, and we sold directly to the purchaser. We had
no bad debts and we kept within ourselves on every move.
I have always kept well within my resources. I have
never found it necessary to strain them, because, inevi-
tably, if you give attention to work and service, the re-
sources will increase more rapidly than you can devise
ways and means of disposing of them.

We were careful in the selection of our salesmen. At
first there was great difficulty in getting good salesmen
because the automobile trade was not supposed to be
stable. It was supposed to be dealing in a luxury — ^in
pleasure vehicles. We eventually appointed agents, se-
lecting the very best men we could find, and then paying
to them a salary larger than they could possibly earn in
business for themselves. In the beginning we had not
paid much in the way of salaries. We were feeling our
way, but when we knew what our way was, we adopted
the policy of paying the veiy highest reward for service and
then insisting upon getting the highest service. Among
the requirements for an agent we laid down the following:

(1) A progressive, up-to-date man keenly alive to the
possibilities of business.

(2) A suitable place of business dean and di@ufis;^\sL
appeaxsaice.

60 MY LIFE AND WORK

(3) A stock of parts sufficient to make prompt re-
placements and keep in active service every Ford car in
his territory.

(4) An adequately equipped repair shop which has in
it the right machinery for every necessary repair and
adjustment.

(5) Mechanics who are thoroughly familiar witli the
construction and operation of Ford cars.

(6) A comprehensive bookkeeping system and a follow-
up sales system, so that it may be instantly apparent
what is the financial status of the various departments of
his business, the condition and size of his stock, the pres-
ent owners of cars, and the futxire prospects.

(7) Absolute cleanliness throughout every department.
There must be no unwashed windows, dusty furniture,

■ dirty floors.

(8) A suitable display sign.

(9) The adoption of policies which will ensure abso-
lutely square dealing and the highest character of business
ethics.

And this is the general instruction that was issued:

A dealer or a salesman ought to have the name of every possible
automobile buyer in his territory, including all those who have never
given the matter s thought. He should then personally solidt by
visitation if possible — by correspondence at the least — every man
on that list and then maldng necessaty memoranda, know the auto-
mobile situation as related to every resident so solicited. If your
territory is too large to permit this, you have too much territory.

The way was not easy. We were harried by a big suit
brought against tiie company to try to force us into line
with an association of automobile manufacturers, who were
operating under the false principle that there was only a
limited market for automobiles and that a monopoly of
that market was essential. This was the famous Selden
Patent suit. At times the support of our defense severely

STARTING THE REAL BUSINESS 61

strained our resources. Mr. Selden, who has but recently
died, had little to do with the suit. It was the association
which sou^t a monopoly under the patent. The situation
was this:

George B. Selden, a patent attorney, filed an applica-
tion as far back as 1879 for a patent the object of which
was stated to be "The production of a safe, simple, and
cheap road locomotive, light in weight, easy to control,
possessed of sufficient power to overcome an ordinary
inclination." This application was kept alive in the
Patent Office, by methods which are perfectly legal, imtil
1895, Vfhen. the patent was granted. In 1879, when the
applicaticm was filed, the automobile was practically
unknown to the general public, but by the time the
patent was issued eveiybody was familiar with self-
propelled vehicles, and most of the men, including myself,
who had been for years working on motor propulsion,
were surprised to learn that what we had made practicable
was covered by an application of years before, although
the applicant had kept his idea merely as an idea. He
had done nothing to put it into practice.

The specific claims imder the patent were divided into
six groups and I think that not a single one of them was a
really new idea even in 1879 when the application was
filed. The Patent Office allowed a combination and
issued a so-called "combination patent" deciding that the
combination (a) of a carriage with its body machinery and
steering wheel, with the (b) propelling mechanism clutch
and gear, and finaUy (c) the en^e, made a vaUd patent.

With all of that we were not concerned. I believed
that my engine had nothing whatsoev«^ in common with
what Selden had in mind. The powerful combination of
manufacturers who called themselves the " licensed
manufacturers " because they operated imder licenses from
the patentee, brought suit against us assoon.a5^e\ie%asi.\»

62 MY LIFE AND WORK

be a factor in motor production. The suit dragged on.
It was intended to scare us out of business. We took
volumes of testimony, and the blow came on September 15,
1909, when Judge Hough rendered an opinion in the
United States District Court finding against us. Imme-
diately that Licensed Association began to advertise,
warning prospective purchaser against omi cars. They
had done the same thing in 1903 at the start of the suit,
when it was thought that we could be put out of busiaess.
I had implicit confidence that eventually we should win
OUT suit. I simply knew that we were right, but it was a
considerable blow to get the first decision against us,
for we beliei^ that many bi^'ers — even though no
injunction was issued against us — ^would be frightened
away from buying because of the threats of (»urt action
against individual owners. The idea was spread that if
the suit finally went against me, every man who owned
a Ford car would be prosecuted. Some of my more
enthusiastic opponents, I imderstand, gave it out privately
that there would be criminal as well as civil suits and
that a man buying a Ford car might as well be buying a
ticket to jail. We answered with an advertisement for
which we took four pages in the principal newspapers all
over the country. We set out our case — ^we set out our
confidence in victory — and in conclusion said:

In condusion vre beg to state if there are any prospective auto-
mobile buyers who are at ail mtinudated by the claims made by our
adversaries that we will give them, in addition to the protection of
the Ford Motor Company with its some $6,000,000.00 of assets, an
individual bond backed by a Company of more than $6,000,000.00
more of assets, so that each and every individual owner of a Ford
car will be protected until at least $12,000,000.00 of assets have
been wiped out by those who desire to control and monopolize this
wonderful industry.

The bond b yours for the asking, so do not allow yourself to be
add inferior cars at extravagant prices because of any statement
tamdehy ibis "Divine" body.

STARTING THE HEAL BUSINESS 6$

N. B. — ^This fight ia not being waged by the Ford Motor Compaiqr
without the advice and counsel of the ablest patent attomqn ci tlu)
East and West.

We thought that the bond would ^ve assurance to the
buyers — ^that they needed confidence. They did not.
We sold more than ei^teen thousand cars — neiurly double
the output of the previous year — and I think about fifty
buyers asked for bonds — ^perhaps it was less than that.

As a matter of fact, probably nothing so well advertised
the Ford car and the Ford Motor Company as did this suit.
It appeared that we were the under dog and we had the
public's sympathy. The association had seventy million
dollars — ^we at the be^nning had not half that number of
thousands. I never had a doubt as to the outcome, but
nevertheless it was a sword hanging over our heads that
we could as well do without. Prosecuting that suit was
probably one of the most shortsighted acts that any group
of American business men has ever combined to commit.
Taken in all its sidelights, it forms the best possible
example of joining imwittingly to kill a trade. I regard
it as most fortunate for the automobile makers of the
country that we eventually won, and the association
ceased to be a serious factor in the business. By 1008,
however, in spite of this suit, we had come to a point where
it was possible to announce and put into fabrication the
kind of car that I wanted to build.

CHAPTER IV

The Secret of Manutacturinq and Servinq

NOW I am not outlining the career of the Ford
Motor Company for any personal reason. I am
not saying; "Go thou and do likewise." What
I am trying to emphasize is that the ordinary way of
doing business is not the best way. I am coming to the
point of my entire departure from the ordinary methods.
From this point dates the extraordinary success of the
company.

We had been fairly following the custom of the trade.
Our automobile was less complex than any other. We had
no outside money in the concern. But aside from these
two points we did not differ materiaUy from tie other
automobile companies, excepting that we had been
somewhat more successful and had rigidly pursued the
policy of taking all cash discounts, putting our profits
back into the business, and maintaining a large cash
balance. We entered cars in all of the races. We
advertised and we pushed our sales. Outside of the
simplicity of the construction of the car, our main differ-
ence in design was that we made no provision for the
purely "pleasure car." We were just as much a pleasure
car as any other car on the market, but we gave no atten-
tion to purely luxury features. We would do special
work for a buyer, and I suppose that we would have made
a special car at a price. We were a prosperous company.
We might easily have sat down and said: "Now we have
arrived. Let us hold what we have got. "
Indeed, there was some disposition to take this stand.

MANUFACTURING AND SERVING ' S?

Some of the stockholders were seriously alarmed when
omr production reached one himdred cars a day. They
wanted to do something to stop me from ruining the
company, and when I replied to the effect that one himdred
cais a day was only a trifle and that I hoped before long
to make a thousand a day, they were inexpressibly
shocked and I understand seriously contemplated coiut
action. If I had followed the general opinion of my associ-
ates I should have kept the business about as it was, put our
funds into a fine administration building, tried to make
bargains with such competitors as seemed too active, made
new designs from time to time to catch the fancy of the
pubKc, and generally have passed on into the position of a
quiet, respectable citizen with a quiet, respectable business.

The temptation to stop and hang on to what one has is ' *
quite natural. I can entirely sympathize with the desire
to quit a life of activity and retire to a life of ease. I have
never felt the urge myself but I can comprehend what it is
— although I think that a man who retires ought entirely
to get out of a business. There is a disposition to retire
and retain control. It was, however, no part of my plan
to do anything of that sort. I regarded oin* progress
merely as an invitation to do more — as an indication that
we had reached a place where we might begin to perform
a real service. I had been planning every day through
these years toward a imiversal car. The pubhc had given
its reactions to the various models. The cars in service,
the racing, and the road tests gave excellent guides as to
the changes that ought to be made, and even by 1905 I
had fairly in mind the specifications of the kind of car I
wanted to build. But I lacked the material to give
strength without weight. I came across that material
almost by accident.

In 1905 I was at a motor race at Palm Beadx, Twofc
waa a bi^ smasb-up and a French car was "WTed&eA.. N^^

M MY LIFE AND WORK

had entered our "Model K" — ^the high-powered ax,
1 thought the foreign cars had smaller and better parts
than we knew anything about. After the wreck I picked
up a little valve strip stem. It was very light and very
strong. I asked what it was made of. Nobody knew.
I gave the stem to my assistant.

"Find out all about this," I told him. "That is the
kind of material we ought to have in our cms. "

He found eventually that it was a French steel and that
thwe was vanadium in it. We tried every steel maker in
America — ^not one could make vanadium steel. I sent to
England for a man who understood how to make the steel
commercially. The next thing was to get a plant to turn
it out. That was another problem. Vanadium requires
8,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The ordinary furnace coiild
not go beyond S,700 degrees. I found a small steel
company in Canton, Ohio. I offered to guarantee them
against loss if they would run a heat for us. They agr^d.
The first heat was a failure. Very litle vanadium
remained in the steel. I had them try again, and the
second time the steel came through. Until then we had
been forced to be satisfied with steel running between
60,000 and 70,000 pounds tensile strength. With vanad-
^iimi, the strength went up to 170,000 pounds.

Having vanadium in hand I pulled apart our models
and tested in detail to determine what kind of steel was
best for every part — ^whether we wanted a hard steel, a
"tough steel, or an elastic steel. We, for the first time I
think, in the history of any large construction, determined
scientifically the exact quality of the steel. As a result
we then selected twenty different types of steel for the
various steel parts. About ten of these were vanadium.
Vanadium was used wherever strength and Kghtness were
required. Of course they are not all the same kind of
— nadium sted. The other elemaits vary according to

MANUFACTURING AND SERVING 67

whether the part is to stand hard wear or whether it needs
spring — ^in short, according to what it needs. Before
these experiments I beUeve that not more than four
different grades of steel had ever been used in automobile
construction. By further e^>erimentuig; especiaUy in the
direction of heat treating, we have been able still further
to increase the strength of the steel and ther^ore to
reduce the weight of the car. In 1910 the French Depart-
ment of Commerce and Industry took one of our steering
spindle connecting rod yokes — selecting it as a vital unit—
and tried it against a similar part from what they con-
sidered the best French car, and in every test our steel
proved the stronger.

The vanadium steel disposed of much of the weight.
The other reqmsites of a universal car I had already
worked out and many of them were in practice. The de-
fflga had to balance. Men die because a part gives out.
Machines wreck themselves because some parts are weaker
than others. Therefore, a part of the problem in design-
ing a universal car was to have as nearly as possible all
parts of equal strength considering their purpose — to put a
motor in a one-horse shay. Also it had to be fool proof.
This was difficult because a gasoline motor is essentially
a dehcate instrument and there is a wonderful opportunity
for any one who has a mind that way to mess it up. I
adopted this slogan:

"When one of my cars breaks down I know I am to
blame. "

From the day the first motor car appeared on the
streets it had to me appeared to be a necessity. It was
this knowledge and assurance that led me to build to the
one end — a car that would meet the wants of the mul-
titudes. AH my efforts were then and still are turned to
the production of one car — one model. And, year follow-
ing year, the pressure was, and still is, \o Ycopttssft «sA

68 MY LIFE AND WORK

refine and make better, with an increasing reduction
in price. The universal car had to have these attri-
butes:

(1) Quality in material to give service in use. Vanad-
ium steel is the strongest, toughest, and most lasting of
steels. It forms the foundation and super-structure of
the cars. It is the highest quahty steel in this respect in
the world, regardless of price.

(2) Simplicity in operation — ^because the masses are
not mechanics.

(8) Power in sufficient quantity.

(4) Absolute rehability — because of the varied uses to
which the cars would be put and the variety of roads over
which they would travel.

(5) Lightness. With the Ford there are only 7.95
pounds to be carried by each cubic inch of piston dis-
placement. This is one of the reasons why Ford cars are
"always going," wherever and whenever you see them —
throng sand and mud, through slush, snow, and water,
up hills, across fields and roadless plains.

(6) Control — ^to hold its speed always in hand, calmly
and safely meeting every emergency and contingency either
in the crowded streets of the city or on dangerous roads.
The planetary transmission of the Ford gave this control
and anybody could work It. That is the " why " of the say-
ing: "Anybody can drive a Ford." It can turn around
almost anywhere.

(7) The more a motor car weighs, naturally the more
fuel and lubricants are used in the driving; the lighter the
weight, the lighter the expense of operation. The light
weight of the Ford car in its early years was used as an
argument against it. Now that is all changed.

The design which I settled upon was called " Model T. "
The important featm« of the new model — which, if it were
accepted, as I thought it would be, I intended to make the

MANUFACTURING AND SERVING 69

only model and then start into real production — was its
simplicity. There were but four constructional units
in the car — ^the power plant, the frame, the front axle, and
the rear axle. All of these were easily accessible and they
were designed so that no special skill would be required
for their repair or replacement. I believed then, although
I said very little about it because of the novelty of the idea,
that it ought to be possible to have parts so simple and so
inexpensive that the menace of expensive hand repair
work would be entirely eliminated. The parts coiUd be
made so cheaply that it would be less expensive to buy
new ones than to have old ones repaired. They could be
carried in hardware shops just as nails or bolts are carried. .
I thought that it was up to me as the designer to make the
car so completely simple that no one could fail to under-
stand it.

Iliat works both ways and applies to everything. The
less complex an article, the easier it is to make, the cheaper
it may be sold, and therefore tlie greater number may be
sold.

It is not necessary to go into the technical details of the
construction but perhaps this is as good a place as any to
review the various models, because "Model T" was the
last of the models and the poKcy which it brought about
took this business out of the ordinary line of business.
Application of the same idea would take any business out
of the ordinary run.

I designed eight models in all before "Model T."
They were: "Model A," "Model B," "Model C,"
"Model F," "Model N," "Model E," "Model S," and
"Model K." Of these. Models "A," "C," and "F"
had two-cylinder opposed horizontal motors. In "Model
A" the motor was at the rear of the driver's seat. In all
of the other models it was in a hood in front. Models
"B," "N," "R," and "S" had motots o^ "Ona Icsvst-

70 MY LIFE AND WORK

cylinder vertical type. "Model K" had six cylinders.
"Model A" developed eight horsepower. "Model B"
developed twenty-four horsepower with a 4j^-iach
cylinder and a S-iach stroke. The highest horsepower
was in "Model K," the six-cylinder car, which developed
forty horsepower. The largest cylinders were those of
"Model B." The smallest were in Models "N," "R,"
and "S " which were S^ inches in diameter with a 3^-inch
stroke. "Model T" has a 3^-indi cylinder with a 4-inch
stroke. The ignition was by dry batteries in all excepting
"Model B," which had storage batteries, and in "Model
K" which had both battery and magneto. In the present
model, the magneto is a part of the power plant and is
built in. The clutch in the first four models was of the
cone type; in the last four and in the present model, of the
multiple disc type. The transmission in all of the cars
has be^i planetary. "Model A" had a chain drive.
"Model B" had a shaft drive. The next two models had
chain drives. Since then all of the cars have had shaft
drives. "Model A" had a 72-inch whed base. Model
"B," which was an extremely good car, had 92 indies.
"Model K" had 120 inches. "Model C" had 78 inches.
The others had 84 inches, and the present car has 100
Inches. In the first five models all of the equipment was
extra. The next three were sold with a partial equipment.
The present car is sold with full equipment. Model "A''
weighed 1,250 pounds. The lightest cars were Models
*'N" and "R." They weighed 1,050 pounds, but they
were both runabouts. The heaviest car was the six-
cylinder, which weighed 2,000 poimds. The present car
weighs 1,200 lbs.

The "Model T" had practically no features which were
not contained in some one or other of the previous models.
£very detail had been fully tested in practice. There was
-^a£ueaang as to whether or not it would be a successful

MANUFACTUKING AND SERVING 71

model. It had to be. There was no way it could escape
being so, for it had not been made in a day. It contained
all that I was then able to put into a motor car plus
the material, which for the first time I was able to
obtain. We put out "Model T" for the season 1908-
1909.

The company was then five years old. The ori^al
factory space had been .38 acre. We had employed an
average of 311 people in the first year, built 1,708 cars, and
had one branch house. In 1908, the factory space had
increased to 2.65 acres and we owned the building. The
average niimber of employees had increased to 1,908.
We built 6,181 cars and had fourteen branch houses.
It was a prosperous business. '

During the season 1908-1909 we continued to make
Models "R" and "S," four-cylinder runabouts and road-
sters, the models that had previously been so successful,
and which sold at $700 and $750. But "Model T"
swept them ri^t out. We sold 10,607 cars — a larger
number than any manufacturer had ever sold. The
price for the touring car was $850. On the same chassis
we mounted a town, car at $1,000, a roadster at $8S5, a
coup6 at $950, and a landaulet at $950.

This season demonstrated conclusively to me that it was
time to put the new poUcy in force. The salesm^i,
before I had announced the policy, were spurred by the
great sales to think that even greater sales might be had
if only we had more models. It is strange how, just as
soon as an article becomes successful, somebody starts to
think that it would be more successful if only it were
different. There is a tendency to keep monkeying with
styles and to spoil a good thing by changing it. The
salesmen were insistent on increasing the line. They
listened to the 5 per cent., the special customers who
could say what they wanted, and iorgot aSl sfcovA. "^sfc

72 MY LIFE AND WORK

95 per cent, who just bought without maldng any
fuss. No business can improve unless it pays the closest
possible attention to complaints and suggestions. If
there is any defect in service then that must be instantly
and rigorously investigated, but when the suggestion is
only as to style, one has to make sure whether it is not
merdy a personal whim that is being voiced. Sal^men
always want to cater to whims instead of acquiring suffi-
cient knowledge of their product to be able to explain to the
customer with the whim that what they have will satisfy
his every requirement — ^that is, of course, provided what
they have does satisfy these requirements.

Therefore in 1909 I announced one morning, without
any previous warning, that ia the future we were going
to build only one model, that the model was going to be
"Model T," and that the chassb would be exactly the
same for all cars, and I remarked:

"Any customer can have a car painted any colour that
he wants so long as it is black. "

I cannot say that any one agreed with me. The selling
people could not of course see the advantages that a single
model would bring about in production. More than that,
they did not particularly care. They thought that our
production was good enough as it was and there was a very
decided opinion that lowering the sales price would hurt
sales, that the people who wanted quality would be driven
away and that there would be none to replace them.
There was very little conception of the motor industry.
A motor car was still regarded as something in the way
of a luxury. The manufactiirers did a good deal to
spread this idea. Some clever persons invented the
name "pleasure car" and the advertising emphasized the
pleasure features. The sales people had ground for their
objections and particularly when I made the following
announcement:

MANUFACTURING AND SERVING 73

I will build a motor car for the great multitude. Xt will be large
enough for the family but small enough for the individual to run
and care for. It will be conatnicted of the beat materials, by the
best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modem engineer-
ing can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a ^
good salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family
the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces.

This annoxincement was received not without pleasure.
The general comment was :

"If Ford does that he will be out of business in six
months."

The impression was that a good car could not be built
at a low price* and that, luiyhow, there was no use in
building a low-priced car because only wealthy people
were in the market for cars. The 1908-1909 sales of more
than ten thousand cars had convinced me that we needed
a new factory. We already had a big modem factory —
the Rquette Street plant. It was as good as, perhaps a
little better than, any automobile factory in the coimtiy.
But I did not see how it was going to care for the sales and
production that were inevitable. So I bought sixty acres
at Highland Park, which was then considered away out in
the country from Detroit. The amount of ground bought
and the plans for a bigger factory than the world has ever
seen were opposed. The question was already being
asked:

"How soon will Ford blow up?"

Nobody knows how majif thousand times it has been
asked since. It is asked only because of the failure to
grasp that a principle rather than an individual is at work,
and the principle is so simple that it seems mysterious.

For 1909-1910, in order to pay for the new land and
buildings, I slightly raised the prices. This is perfectly
justifiable and results in a benefit, not an injury, to the
purchaser. I did exactly the same thing a few years ago —
or rather, in that case I did not lowei tiw \mcft aaSa ■os^

74 MY LIFE AND WORK

annual custom, in order to build the River Rouge plant.

The extra money might in each case have been had by
borrowing, but then we should have had a continuing
(^large upon the business and all subsequent cars would
have had to bear this charge. The price of all the modds
was increased $100, with the exception of the roadster,
which was increased only $75 and of the landaulet and town
car, which were increased $150 and $200 respectively. We
sold 18,664 cars, and then for 1910-1911, with the new
facilities, I cut the touring car from $950 to $780 and we
sold 34,538 cars. That is the beginning of the steady
reduction in the price of the cars in the face of ever-in-
creasing cost of materials and ever-higher wages.

Contrast the year 1908 with the year 1911. The
factory space increased from 2.65 to 32 acres. The aver-
age number of employees from 1,908 to 4,110, and the cars
built from a little over six thousand to nearly thirty-five
thousand. You will note that men were not employed in
proportion to the output.

We were, almost overnight it seems, in great production.
How did all this come about?

Simply through the appUcation of an inevitable prin-
ciple. By the application of intelligently directed power
and machinery. In a little dark shop on a side street an
old man had laboured for years making axe handles.
Out of seasoned hickory he fashioned them, with the help
of a draw shave, a chisel, and a supply of sandpaper.
Carefully was each handle weighed and balanced. No
two of them were alike. The curve must exactly fit the
hand and must conform to the grain of the wood. From
dawn until dark the old man laboured. His average
product was eight handles a week, for which he received a
doUar and a half each. And often some of these were
unsaleable — ^because the balance was not true.

To-duy yoa can buy a better a^. handle, made by

MANUFACTUHING AND SERVING 75

machineiy, for a few cents. And you need not worry
about the balance. They are all alike — and every one is
perfect. Modem methods applied in a big way have not
only brought the cost of axe handles down to a fraction of
their former cost — but they have immensely improved
the product.

It was the application of these same methods to the
making of the Ford car that at the very start lowered the
price and heightened the quaUty. We just developed an
idea. The nucleus of a business may be an idea. That is,
an inventor or a thou^tf ul workman works out a new and
better way to serve some established human need; the idea
commends itself, and people want to avail themselves of it.
In this way a single individual may prove, through his idea
yr discovery, the nucleus of a business. But the creation of
the body and bulk of that business is shared by everyone
who has anything to do with it. No mauufactiu^r' can
say: "I built this business" — if he has required the help
of thousands of men in building it. It is a joint production.
Everyone employed in it has contributed something to it.
By working and producing they make it possible for the
purchasing world to keep coming to that business for the
type of service it provides, and thus they help establish
a custom, a trade, a habit which supplies them with a
livelihood. That is the way our company grew and just
how I shall start explaining in the next chapter.

In the meantime, the company had become world-wide.
We had branches in London and in Australia. We were
shipping to every part of the world, and in England
particularly we were beginning to be as well known as in
America. The introduction of the car in England was
somewhat difficult on accoxmt of the failure of the Ameri-
can bicycle. Because the American bicycle had not been
suited to English uses it was taken for granted and made a.
point of by the distributors that no Km!en.ca3Ei. n^ioj^

76 MY LIFE AND WORK

could appeal to the British market. Two "Model A's"
found their way to England in 1903. The newspapers
refused to notice them. The automobile agents refused
to take the slightest interest. It was rumoured that the
principal components of its manufacture were string and
hoop wire and that a buyer would be lucky if it held
together for a fortnij^t! In the first year about a dozen
cars in all were used; the second was only a httle better.
And I may say as to the reliability of that "Model A"
that most of them after nearly twenty years are still in
some kind of service in England.

In 1905 our agent entered a "Model C" in the Scottish
Reliability Triab. In those days reUabiUty runs were
more popular in England than motor races. Perhaps there
was no inkling that after all an automobile was not
merdy a toy. The Scottish Trials was over eight
hundred miles of hilly, heavy roads. The Ford came
through with only one involuntary stop against it.
That started the Ford sales in England. In that same
year Ford tasdcabs were placed in London for the first
time. In the next several years the sales began to pick up.
The cars went into every endurance and reliability test
and won every one of them. The Brighton dealer had
ten Fords driven over the South Downs for two days in a
kind of steeplechase and every one of them came through.
As a result six hundred cars were sold that year. In 1911
Henry Alestander drove a "Model T" to the top of Ben
Nevis, 4,600 feet. That year 14,060 cars were sold in
England, and it has never since been necessary to stage
any kind of a stunt. We eventually opened our own
factory at Manchester; at first it was purely an assembling
plant. But as the years have gone by we have progres-
sively made more and more of the car.

f:HAPTER V
Getting into Production

IF a device would save in time just 10 per cent, or
increase results 10 per cent., then its absence is
always a 10 per cent. tax. If the time of a person
is worth fifty cents an hour, a 10 per cent, saving is worth
five cents an hour. If the owner of a skyscraper could
increase his income 10 per cent, he would willingly pay
half the increase jiist to know how. The reason why he
owns a skyscraper is that science has proved that cer-
tain materials, used in a given way, can save space and
increase rental incomes. A building thirty stories high
needs no more ground space than one five stories high.
Getting along with the old-style architecture costs the
five-story man the income of twenty-five floors. Save ten
steps a day for each of twelve thousand employees and you
will have saved fifty miles of wasted motion and misspent
energy.

Those are the principles on which the production of my
plant was built up. They all come practically as of
course. In the be^nning we tried to get machinists.
As the necessity for production increased it became appar-
ent not only that enough machinists were not to be had,
but also that skilled men were not necessary in production.
Mid out of this grew a principle that I later want to pre-
sent in full.

It is self-evident that a majority of the people in the
world are not mentally — even if they are physically —
capable of making a good living. That ia> \ii«^ «s«. T^aX.
capable o! Sumishmg with their own \iscnAs a. »^«>ssj^*

T8 MY LIFE AND WORK

quantity of the goods which this world needs to be able
to exchange thar imaided product for the goods which they
need. I have heard it said, in fact I believe it is quite a
current thought, that we have taken skill out of work.
We have not. We have put in skill. We have put a
higher skill into planning, management, and tool building,
and the results of that skill are enjoyed by the man who is
not skilled. This I shall later enlarge on.

We have to recognize the unevenness in human mental
equipments. If every job in our place required skill
the place would never have existed. Sufficiently skilled
men to the number needed could not have been trained in
a hxmdred years. A million men working by hand could
not even approximate our present daily output. No one
could manage a miUion men. But more important than
that, the product of the unaided hands of those million
men could not be sold at a price in consonance with buying
t)ower. And even if it were possible to imagine such an
aggregation and imagine its management and correlation,
just think of the area that it would have to occupy ! How
many of the men would be engaged, not in producing, but
in merely carrying from place to place what the other men
had produced? I cannot see how under such conditions
the men could possibly be paid more than ten or twenty
cents a day — for of course it is not the employer who pays
wages. He only handles the money. It is the product
that pays the wages and it is the management that
arranges the production so that the product may pay the

The more economical methods of production did not
begin all at once. They began gradually — just as we
began gradually to make our own parts. "Model T"
was the first motor that we made ourselves. The great
economies began in assembhng and then extended to other
'sections so that, while to-day we have skilled mechanics

GETTING INTO PRODUCTION 7»

in plenty, they do not produce automobiles — they make
it easy for others to produce them. Our skilled men are
the tool makers, the experimental workmen, the machinists,
and the pattern makers. They are as good as any men in
the world — so good, indeed, that they should not be wasted
in doing that which the machines they contrive can do
better. The rank and file of men come to us unskilled;
tJbey learn their jobs within a few hours or a few days.
If they do not learn within that time they will never be of
any use to us. These men are, many of them, foreigners,
and all that is required before they are taken on is that
they should be potentially able to do enough work to pay
the overhead charges on the floor space they occupy.
They do not have to be able-bodied men. We have jobs
that require great physical strength — altiiough they are
rapidly lessening; we have other jobs that require no
strength whatsoever — ^jobs which, as far as strength is
concerned, might be attended to by a child of three.

It is not possible, without going deeply into technical
processes, to present the whole development of manu-
facturing, step by step, in the order in which each thing
came about. I do not know that this could be done, be-
cause something has been happening nearly every day and
nobody can keep track. Take at random a number of the
changes. From them it is possible not only to gain some
idea of what will happen when this world is put on a
production basis, but also to see how much more we pay
for things than we ought to, and how much lower wages
are than they ought to be, and what a vast field remains
to be explored. The Ford Company is only a little way
along on the journey.

A Ford car contains about five thousand parts — ^that is
counting screws, nuts, and all. Some of the parts are
fairly bulky and others are almost the size of watch ^arta.
In our first assembling we simply ata,T\:jeA. \o 'vv^ a. <:»«

80 MY LIFE AND WORK

together at a spot on the floor and workmen brought to it
the parts as they were needed in exactly the same way
that one builds a house. When we started to make parts
it was natural to create a single department of the factory
to make that part, but usually one workman performed
all of the operations necessary on a small part. The
rapid press of production made it necessary to devise plana
of production that would avoid having the workers falling
over one another. The undirected worker spends more of
hb time walking about for materials and tools than he
does in working; he gets small pay because pedestrianism
is not a highly paid line.

The first step forward in assembly came when we began
taking the work to the men instead of the men to the
work. We now have two general principles in all opera-
tions — that a man shall never have to take more than one
step, if possibly it can be avoided, and that no man need
ever stoop over.

The principles of assembly are these:

(1) Place the tools and the men in the sequence of the
operation so that each component part shall travel the
least possible distance while in the process of finishing.

(2) Use work slides or some other form of carrier so
that when a workman completes his operation, be drops
the part always in the same place — which place must
always be the most convenient place to his hand — and if
possible have gravity carry the part to the next work-
man for his operation.

(3) Use sliding assembling lines by which the parts to
be assembled are delivered at convenient distances.

The net result of the application of these pririciples is
the reduction of the necessity for thought on the part of
the worker and the reduction of his movements to a
minimum. He does as nearly as possible only one thing
with only one movement.

GETTING INTO PRODUCTION 81

The assembling of the chassis is, from the point of view
of the non-mechanical mind, our most interesting and
perhaps best known operation, and at one time it was an
exceedingly important operation. We now ship out the
parts for assembly at the point of distribution.

Along about April 1, 1913, we first tried the experiment
of an assembly line. We tried it on assembling the fly-
wheel magneto. We try everything in a little way first —
we will rip out anything once we discover a better way,
but we have to know absolutely that the new way is going \
to be better than the old before we do anything drastic.

I believe that this was the first moving line ever installed.
The idea came in a general way from the overhead trolley
that the Chicago packers use in dressing beef. We had
previously assembled the fly-wheel magneto in the usual
method. With one workman doing a complete job he
could turn out from thirty-five to forty pieces in a nine-
hour day, or about twenty minutes to an assembly.
What he did alone was then spread into twenty-nine
operations; that cut down the assembly time to thirteen
minutes, ten seconds. Then we raised the height of
the line eight inches — this was in 1914 — and cut the time
to seven minutes. Further experimenting with the speed
that the work should move at cut the time down to five
minutes. In short, the result is this: by the aid of scienti-
fic study one man is now able to do somewhat more than
four did only a comparatively few years ago. That
line established the eflSciency of the method and we now
use it everywhere. The assembling of the motor, formerly
done by one man, is now divided into eighty-four opera-
tions — those men do the work that three times their num-
ber formerly did. In a short time we tried out the plan
on the chassis.

About the best we had done in stationary cKasaa
assembling was an average of twelve \ici\ns Mi&.-\w«*:3-

82 MY LIFE AND WORK

eight minutes per chassis. We tried the experiment of

drawing the chassis with a rope and windlass down a line
two hundred fifty feet long. Six assemblers travelled with
the chassis and picked up the parts from piles placed along
the line. This rough experiment reduced the time to five
hours fifty minutes per chassis. In the early part of 1914
we elevated the assembly line. We had adopted the
policy of "man-high" work; we had one line twenty-six
and three quarter inches and another twenty-four and
one half inches from the floor — to suit squads of different
heights. The waist-high arrangement and a further
subdivision of work so that each man had fewer move-
ments cut down the labour time per chassis to one hour
thirty-three minutes. Only the chassis was then assem-
bled in the line. The body was placed on in "John R.
Street" — the famous street that runs through our High-
land Park factories. Now the line assembles the whole
car.

It must not be imagined, however, that all this worked
out as quickly as it sounds. The speed of the moving
work had to be carefully tried out; in the fly-wheel
magneto we first had a speed of sixty inches per minute.
That was too fast. Then we tried eighteen inches per
minute. . That was too slow. Finally we settled on
forty-four inches per minute. The idea is that a man
must not be hurried in his work — ^he must have every
second necessary but not a single unnecessary second.
We have worked out speeds for each assembly, for the
success of the chassis assembly caused us gradual^ to
overhaul our entire method of manufacturing and to put
all assembling in mechanically driven Knes. The chassis
assembling line, for instance, goes at a pace of six feet per
minute; the front axle assembly line goes at one hundred
eighty-nine inches per minute. In the chassis assembUng
&re forty-Bye separate operations or stations. The first

GETTING INTO PRODUCTION 83

men fasten four mud-guard brackets to the chassis frame;
the motor arrives on the tenth operation and so on in
detail. Some men do only one or two small operations,
others do more. The man who places a part does not
fasten it — the part may not be fully in place until after
several operations later. The man who puts in a bolt does
not put on the nut; the man who puts on the nut does not
tighten it. On operation number thirty-four the bud-
ding motor gets its gasoline; it has previously received
lubrication; on operation number forty-four the radiator
is filled with water, and on operation number forty-five
the car drives out onto John R. Street.

Essentially the same ideas have been appKed to the
assembhng of the motor. In October, 1913, it required
nine hours and fifty-four minutes of labour time to assemble
one motor; six months later, by the moving assembly
method, this time had been reduced to five hours and
fifty-six minutes. Every piece of work in the shops
moves; it may move on hooks on overhead chains going to
assembly in the exact order in which the parts are required ;
it may travel on a moving platform, or it may go by
gravity, but the point is that there is no lifting or trucking
of anything other than materials. Materials are brought
in on small trucks or trailers operated by cut-down Ford
chassis, which are sufficiently mobile and quick to get in
and out of any aisle where they may be required to go.
No workman has anything to do with moving or lifting
anything. That is all in a separate department — ^the
department of transportation.

We started assembling a motor car in a single factory.
Then as we began to make parts, we began to departmen-
taUze so that each department would do only one thing.
As the factory is now organized each department makes
only a single part or assembles a part. A department is &
little factory in itself. The part cornea m\iO \\. «a "ta^

84 MY LIFE AND WORK

material or as a casting, goes throu^ the sequence of
madiines and heat treatments, or whatever may be
required, and leaves ttiat department finished. It was
only because of transport ease that the departments
were grouped together when we started to manufacture.
I did not know that such minute divisions would be pos-
sible; but as our production grew and departments multi-
plied, we actually changed from making automobiles
to making parts. Then we found that we had made
another new discovery, which was that by no means all
of the parts had to be made in one factory. It was not
really a discovery — ^it was something in the nature of going
around in a circle to my first manufacturing when I
bought the motors and probably ninety per cent, of the
parts. When we began to make om- own parts we prac-
tically took for granted that they all had to be made in
the one factory — that there was some special virtue in
having a single roof over the manufacture of the entire car.
We have now developed away from this. If we build any
more large factories, it will be only because the making of
a single part must be in such tremendous volume as to
require a large unit. I hope that in the course of time the
big Highland Park plant will be doing only one or two
things. The casting has already been taken away from it
and has gone to the River Rouge plant. So now we are on
our way back to where we started from — excepting that,
instead of buying our parts on the outside, we are begin-
ning to make them in our own factories on the outside.

This is a development which holds exceptional conse-
quences, for it means, as I shall enlarge in a later chapter,
that highly standardized, highly subdivided industry need
no longer become concentrated in large plants with all the
inconveniences of transportation and housing that hamper
large plants. A thousand or five hundred men ought to be
enough in a ^ngle factory; then there would be no problem

GETTING INTO PRODUCTION 85

of tranajwrting them to work or away from work and there
would be no dtuns or any of the other unnatural ways of
living incident to the overcrowding that must take place
if the workmen are to Hve within reasonable distances of a
very large plant.

Highland Park now has five hxmdred departments.
Down at our Piquette plant we had only eighteen depart-
ments, and formerly at Highland Park we had only one
hundred and fifty departments. This illustrates how far
we are going in the manufacture of parts.

Hardly a week passes without some improvement being
made somewhere in machine or process, and sometimes
this is made in defiance of what is called "the best shop
practice." I recall that a machine manufacturer was
once called into conference on the building of a special
machine. The specifications called for an output of two
hundred per hour.

"This is a mistake, " said the manufacturer, "you mean
two hundred a day — ^no machine can be forced to two
hundred an hour."

The company officer sent for the man who had designed
the machine and they called his attention to the speci-
fication. He said:

"Yes, what about it?"

"It can't be done," said the manufacturer positivdy,
"no machine built will do that — it is out of the question."

"Out of the question!" exclaimed the engineer, "if you
wiU come down to the main floor you will see one doing it;
we built one to see if it could be done and now we want
more like it. "

The factory keeps no record of experiments. The fore-
men and superintendents remember what has been done.
If a certain method has formerly been tried and failed,
somebody will remember it — ^but I am not particularly
anxious for the men to remember whal aoxofifircie ^tefc^saa

86 MY LIFE AND WORK

tried to do in the past, for then we mi^t quickly accumu-
late far too many things that could not be done. That is
one of the troubles with extensive records. K you keep
on recording all of your failures you will shortly have a hst
showing that there is nothing left for you to tiy — ^whereas
it by no means follows because one man has failed in a
certain method that another man will not succeed.

They told us we could not cast gray iron by our endless
chain method and I believe there is a record of failures.
But we are doing it. The man who carried through our
work either did not know or paid no attention to the
previous figures. Likewise we were told that it was out of
the question to poiu" the hot iron directly from the blast
furnace into mould. The Tisual method is to run the iron
into pigs, let them season for a time, and then remelt them
for casting. But at the River Rouge plant we are casting
directly from cupolas that are filled from the blast furnaces.
Then, too, a record of failures — ^particularly if it is a digni-
fied and well-authenticated record — deters a yoimg man
from trying. We get some of our best results from letting
fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

None of our men are "experts." We have most
unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as
soon as he thinks himself an expert — because no one ever
considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man
who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he
has done, that he is always presang forward and never
g^ves up an instant of thought to how good and how
efiicient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of
trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing
is impossible. The moment one gets into the "expert"
state of mind a great number of things become impossible.

I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities.
I cannot discover that any one knows enough about any-
tbing on this earth definitdy to say what is and what is not

GETTING INTO PRODUCTION 87

possuble. The right kind of experience, the right kind of
technical training, ought to enlarge the mind and reduce
the number of impossibilities. It unfortunately does
nothing of the kind. Most technical training and the
average of that which we call experience, provide a record
of previous failures and, instead of these failures being
taken for what they are worth, they are taken as absolute
bars to progress. If some man, calling himself an
authority, says that this or that cannot be done, then a
horde of unthinking followers start the chorus: "It can't
be done."

Take castings, • Casting has always been a wasteful
process and is so old that it has accumulated many
traditions which make improvements extraordinarily
difficult to bring about. I believe one authority on mould-
ing declared — ^before we started our experiments — ^that/
any man who said he could reduce costs within half a yea/
wrote himself down as a fraud.

Our foundry used to be much like other foundries.
When we cast the first" Model T" cylinders in 1910, every-
thing in the place was done by hand; shovels and wheel-
barrows aboxmded. The work was then either skilled
or tmskilled; we had moulders and we had labourers. Now
we have about five per cent, of thorou^y skilled mould-
ers and core setters, but the remaining 95 per cent.
are unskilled, or to put it more accurately, must be skilled
in exactly one operation which the most stupid man can
learn within two days. The moulding is all done by
machinery. Each part which we have to cast has a unit
or units of its own — according to the mmiber required in
the plan of production. The machinery of the unit is
adapted to the single casting; thus the men in the unit
each perform a single operation that is always the same.
A unit consists of an overhead railway to which at intervals
are hxmg httle platforms for the moulds. ^VftwsvA, igsm^

I

88 MY LIFE AND WORK

into tedmical details, let me say the making of the moulds
and the cores, and the packing of the cores, are done with
the work in motion on the platforms. The metal is poured
at another point as the work moves, and by the time the
mould in which the metal has been poured reaches the
terminal, it is cool enou^ to start on its automatic way
to cleaning, machining, and assembling. And the platform
is moving around for a new load.

Take the development of the piston-rod assembly.
Even xmder the old plan, this operation took only three
minutes and did not seem to be one to bother about.
There were two benches and twenty -eight men in all;
they assembled one hundred sevoity-five pistons and rods
in a nine-hour day — ^which means just five seconds over
three minutes each. There was no inspection, and many
of the piston and rod assemblies came back from the motor
assembling line as defective. It is a very simple operation.
The workman pushed the pin out of the piston, oiled the
pin, slipped the rod in place, put the .pin through the rod
and piston, tightened one screw, and opened another screw.
That was the whole operation. The foreman, examining
the operation, coidd not discover why it should take as
much as three minutes. He analyzed the motions with a
stop-watch. He found that four hours out of a nine-hour
day were spent in walking. The assembler did not go off
anywhere, but he had to shift his feet to gather in his
materials and to push away his finished piece. In the
whole task, each man performed six operations. The fore-
man devised a new plan; he split the operation into three
divisions, put a slide on the bench and three men on each
side of it, and an inspector at the end. Instead of one man
performing the whole operation, one man then performed
only one third of the operation — he performed only as
much as he could do without shifting his feet. They
cut down ihe squad from twenty-eight to fourteen men.

GETTING INTO PRODUCTION 89

The former record for twenty-eight men was one hundred
seventy-five assemblies a day. Now seven men turn out
twenty-sis hundred assemblies in eight hours. It is not
necessary to calculate the savings there!

Painting the rear axle assembly once gave some trouble.
It used to be dipped by hand into a tank of enamel.
This required several handhngs and the services of two
men. Now one man takes care of it all on a special
machine, designed and built in the factory. The man now
merely hangs the assembly on a moving chain which carries
it up over the enamel tank, two levers then thrust thimbles
over the ends of the ladle shaft, the paint tank rises six feet,
immerses the axle, returns to position, and the axle goes on
to the drying oven. The whole cycle of operations now
takes just thirteen seconds.

The radiator is a complex affair and soldering it used
to be a matter of skill. There are ninety-five tubes in
E radiator. Fitting and soldering these tubes in placA
is by hand a long operation, requiring both skill and pa-
tience. Now it is all done by a machine which will make
twelve hundred radiator cores in eight hours; then they
are soldered in place by being f^arried through a furnace
by a conveyor. No tinsmith work and so no skill are
required.

We used to rivet the crank-case arms to the crank-case,
using pneimoatic hammers which were supposed to be the
latest development. It took six men to hold the hammers
and six men to hold the casings, and the din was terrific.
Now an automatic press operated by one man, who does
nothing else, gets through five times as much work in a day
as those twelve men did.

In the Piquette plant the cylinder casting travelled four
^ousand feet in the course of finishing; now it travels
only slightly over three hundred feet.

Tliere is no manual handling of material. Th!£i:e\s.^Ds:^.^

90 MY LIFE AND WORK

single hand operation. If a machine can be made auto-
matic, it is made automatic. Not a single operation is
ever considered as being done in the best or cheapest way.
At that, only about ten per cent, of our tools are special;
the others are regular machines adjusted to the particular
job. And they are placed almost side by side. We put
more machinery per square foot of floor space than any
other factory in the world — every foot of space not used
carries an overhead expense. We want none of that waste.
Yet there is all the room needed — ^no man has too much
room and no man has too httle room. Dividing and sub-
dividing operations, keeping the work in motion — those
are the keynotes of production. But also it is to be
remembered that all the parts are designed so that they
can be most easily made. And the saving? Although
the comparison is not quite fair, it is startlmg. If at our
present rate of production we employed the same number
of men per ear that we did when we began in 1903 — and
those men were only for assembly — ^we should to-day
require a force of more than two hundred thousand. We
have less than fifty thousand men on automobile produc"
tion at our highest point of around foiur thousand cars a
dayj

CHAPTER VI

Machines and Men

THAT which one has to fight hardest agamst in
bringing together a large number of people to do
work is excess organization and consequent red
tape. To my mind there is no bent of mind more dangerous
than that which is sometimes described as the "genius for
organization." This usually resiJts in the birth of a great
big chart showing, after the fashion of a family tree,
how authority ramifies. The tree is heavy with nice
round berries, each of which bears the name of a man or of
an office. Every man has a title and certain duties whicl^
are strictly limited by the circumference of his beny.

If a straw boss wants to say something to the general'
superintendent, his message has to go through the sub-,
foreman, the foreman, the department head, and all the,
assistant superintendents, before, in the course of time,
it reaches the general superintendent. Probably by that
time what he wanted to talk about is already histoiy.
It takes about six weeks for the message of a man Kving
in a berry on the lower left-hand comer of the chart to reach
the president or chairman of the board, and if it ever
does reach one of these august officials, it has by that
time gathered to itself about a pound of criticisms, sug-
gestions, and comments. Very few things are ever taken
under "official consideration" until long after the time
when they actually ought to have been done. The buck
is passed to and fro and all responsibility is dodged by in-
dividuals — ^following the lazy notion that two heads are
better than one.

92 MY LIFE AND WORK

I Now a business, in my way of tliinking, is not a machine.
I It is a collection of people who are brought together to do
work and not to write letters to one another. It is not
necessary for any one department to know what any other
department is doing. If a man is doing his work he will
not have time to take up any other work. It is the busi-
ness of those who plan the entire work to see that all of
the departments are working properly toward the same
end. It is not necessary to have meetings to establish
.< good feeling between individuals or departments. It is
y. not necessary for people to love each other in order to work
III together. Too much good fellowship may indeed be a
111 very bad thing, for it may lead to one man trying to cover
ijiup the faults of another. That is bad for both men.

When we are at work we ought to be at work. When we
are at play we ou^t to be at play. There is no use trying
to mix the two. The sole object ought to be to get the
work done and to get paid for it. When the work is done,
then the play can come, but not before. And so the Ford
factories and enterprises have no organization, no specific
duties atta<iiing to any position, no line of succession or of
authority, very few titles, and no conferences. We have
only the clerical help that is absolutely required; we have
no elaborate records of any kind, and consequently no
red tape.

We make the individual responsibility complete. The
workman is absolutely responsible for hb work. The
straw boss is responsible for the workmen xmder him.
The foreman is responsible for his group. The depart-
ment head is responsible for the department. The general
superintendent is responsible for the whole factory. Every
man has to know what is going on in his sphere. I say
"general superintendent. " There is no such formal title.
One man is in charge of the factory and has been for years.
He has two men with him, who, without in any way

MACHINES AND MEN 08

having their duties defined, have taken particular sections
of the work to themselves. With them are about half
a dozen other men in the nature of assistants, but without
specific duties. They have all made jobs for themselves —
but there are no limits to their jobs. They just work in
where they best fit. One man chases stock and shortages.
Another has grabbed inspection, and so on.

This may seem haphazard, but it is not. A group of men,
whoDy intent upon getting work done, have no difficulty
in seeing that the work is done. They do not get into
trouble about the limits of authority^ because they are not
thinking of titles. If they had offices and all that, they
would shortly be giving up their time to office work and to
wondering why did they not have a better office than some
other fellow. I

Because there are no titles and no limits of authority^ /
tiiore is no question of red tape or going over a man's /
head. Any workman can go to anybody, and so estab- '
hshed has become this custom, that a foreman does not get
sore if a workman goes over him and directly to the head of
the factory. The workman rarely ever does so, because a
foreman knows as well as he knows his own name that
if he has been imjust it will be very quickly found out,
and he shall no longer be a foreman. One of the things
that we will not tolerate is injustice of any kind. The
moment a man starts to swell with authority he is dis-
covered, and he goes out, or goes back to a machine.
A large amount of labour unrest comes from the unjust
exercise of authority by those in subordinate positions,
and I am afraid that in far too many manufacturing in-
stitutions it is really not possible for a workman to get
a square deal.

Tlie work and the work alone controls us. That is one
of the reasons why we have no titles. Most me.'o. «»5^
swing a job, but they are floored by a \,iS\e. t^ifi. t'&fis^. cS. ». .

04 MY LIFE AND WORK

title is very peculiar. It has been used too much as a sign
of emancipation from work. It is almost equivalent to a
badge bearing the legend:

"This man has nothing to do but regard himself as
important and all others as inferior. "

Not only is a titie often injurious to the wearer, but it
has its effect on others as well. There is perhaps no greater
single source of personal dissatisfaction among men than
the fact that the title-bearers are not always the real
leaders. Everybody acknowledges a real leader — a man
who is fit to plan and command. And when you find a
real leader who bears a title, you will have to inquire of
someone else what his title is. He doesn't boast about it.

Titles in business have been greatly overdone and busi-
ness has suffered. One of the bad features is the division
of responsibility according to titles, which goes so far as to
amount to a removal altogether of responsibility. Where
i responsibiUty is broken up into many small bits and
divided among many departments, each department under
its own titular head, who in turn is surrounded by a
group bearing their nice sub-titles, it is difficult to find
any one who really feels responsible. Everyone knows
what "passing the buck" means. The game must have
originated in industrial organizations where the depart-
ments simply shove responsibility along. The health of
every organization depends on every member — ^whatever
his place— feeling that everything that happens to come
to his notice relating to the wdfare of the business is his
own job. Railroads have gone to the devil under the
eyes of departments that say:

"Oh, that doesn't come under our department. De-
partment X, 100 miles away, has that in charge."

There used to be a lot of advice given to officials not
to hide behind their titles. The very necessity for the
Wwce showed a condition tlutt needed more than advice

MACHINES AND MEN 05

to correct it. And the correction is just this — abolish the
titles. A few may be legally necessary; a few may be
useful in directing the public how to do business with the
concern, but for the rest the best rule is simple: "Get rid
of them. "

As a matter of fact, the record of business in general
just now is such as to detract very much from the value
of titles. No one would boast of being president of a
bankrupt bank. Business on the whole has not been so
skillfully steered as to leave much margin for pride in the
steersmen. The men who bear titles now and are worth
anything are forgetting their titles and are down in the
foundation of business looking for the weak spots. They
are back again in the places from which they rose — trying
to reconstruct from the bottom up. Aad when a man is
really at work, he needs no title. His work honours him.

All of om* people come into the factory or the offices
through the employment departments. As I have said,
we do not hire experts — neither do we hire men on past
experiences or for any position other than the lowest.
Since we do not take a man on his past history, we do not
refuse him because of his past history. I never met a man
who was thoroughly bad. There is always some good in v.
him — if he gets a chance. That is the reason we do not |;
care in the least about a man's antecedents — we do notil]
hire a man's history, we hire the man. If he has been injlj
jail, that is no reason to say that he will be in jail again.JI
I think, on the contrary, he is, if given a chance, very j
likely to make a special effort to keep out of jail. Our
employment office does not bar a man for anything he has
previously done — he is equally acceptable whether he has
been in Sing Sing or at Harvard and we do not even inquire
from which place he has graduated. All that he needs
is the desire to work. If he does not desire to work, it
is very unjikely that he will apply lot aposiL\!vao.>Vc«'*'Ta

96 MY LIFE AND WORK

pretty well understood that a man in the Ford plant works.

We do not, to repeat, care what a man has been. If he
has gone to college he ought to be able to go ahead faster,
but he has to start at the bottom and prove his ability.
Every man's future rests solely with himself. There is
far too much loose talk about men being unable to obtain
recognition. With us every man is fairly certain to get
ithe exact recognition he deserves.

Of course, there are certmn factors in the desire for
recognition which must be reckoned with. The whole
modem industrial system has warped the desire so out of
shape that it is now almost an obsession. There was a time
when a man's personal advancement depended entir^
and immediately upon hb work, and not upon any one's
favour; but nowadays it often depends far too much upon
the individual's good fortune in catching some influential
eye. That is what we have successfully fought against.
Men will work with the idea of catching somebody's eye;
they will work with the idea that if they fail to get credit
for what they have done, they might as well have done it
badly or not have done it at all. Thus the work some-
times becomes a secondary consideration. The job in
hand — ^the article in hand, the special kind of service in
hand — turns out to be not the principal job. The main
work becomes personal advancement — a platform from
which to catdi somebody's eye. This habit of making
the work secondary and the recognition primary is unfair
to the work. It makes recognition and credit the real job.
And this also has an unfortunate effect on the worker.
It encourages a peculiar kind of ambition which is neither
lovely nor productive. It produces the kind of man who
imagines that by "standing in with the boss" he will get
ahead. Every shop knows this kind of man. And the
worst of it is there are some things in the present industrial
system w)ndb. make it appear that the game really pays.

MACHINES AND MEN 97

Foremen are only human. It is natural that they should
be flattered by being made to believe that they hold the
weal or woe of workmen in their hands. It is natural,
also, that being open to flatteiy, their self-seeking subor-
dinates should flatter them still more to obtain and profit
by their favour. That is why I want as little as possible
of the personal element.

It is particularly easy for any man who nevCT knows it
all to go forward to a higher p)osition with us. Some men
will work hard but they do not possess the capacity to think
and especially to think quick^. Such men get as far as
their.ability deserves. A man may, by his industry, de-
serve advancement, but It cannot be possibly given him
'unless he also has a certain element of leadership. This
is not a dream world we are living in. I think that every
man in the shaking-down process of our factory eventually
lands about where he belongs.

We are never satisfied with the way that everything b
done in any part of the organization; we always think it
ought to be done better and that evoitually it will be done
better. The spirit of crowding forces the man who has the
qualities for a higher place eventually to get it. He per-
haps would not get the place if at any time the organi-
zation — which is a word I do not Uke to use — ^became fixed,
so that there would be routine steps and dead men's shoes.
But we have so few titles that a man who ought to be doing
somethiDg better than he is doing, very soon gets to doing
it — ^he is not restrained by the fact that there is no po-
sition ahead of him "open" — for there are no "positions."
We have no cut-and -dried places — our best men make their
places. This is easy enou^ to do, for there is always
work, and when you think of getting the work done instead
of finding a title to fit a man who wants to be promoted,
then there is no difficulty about promotion. The v^<v-
motion itself is not formal; the man svm^y &!i&a\icma^

98 MY LIFE AND WORK

doing something other than what he was doing and getting
more money.

All of our people have thus come up from the bottom.
The head of the factoiy started as a machinist. The man
in charge of the big River Rouge plant began as a pattern-
maker. Another man overseeing one of the principal
d^>artments started as a sweeper. There is not a single
man anywhere in the factoiy who did not simply come in
off the street. Everything that we have developed has
been done by men who have qualified thranselves with us.
We fortunately did not inherit any traditions and we are
not founding any. If we have a tradition It is this:

Everything can always be done better than it is being
done.

That pressing always to do work better and faster
solves nearly every factory problem. A department gets
its standing on its rate of production. The rate of pro-
duction and the cost of production are distinct elements.
The foremen and superintendents would only be wasting
time were they to keep a check on the costa in their
departments. There are certain costs — such as the rate
of wages, the overhead, the price of materials, and the like,
which they could not in any way control, so they do not
bother about them. What they can control is the rate
of production in their own departments. The rating of a
department is gained by dividing the number of parts
produced by the niunber of hands working. Every
foreman checks his own department daily — ^he cMTies the
figures always with him. The superintendent has a
tabulation of all the scores; if there is something wrong
in a department the output score shows it at once, the
superintendent makes inquiries and the foreman looks
alive. A considerable part of the incentive to better
methods is directly traceable to this simple rule-of-thmnb
method of rating production. The foreman need not be

MACHINES AND MEN 09

a cost accountant — ^he is no better a foreman for being
one. His charges are the ina<^iines and the human
beings in his department. "When they are working at
their best he has performed his service. The rate of his
production is his guide. There is no reason for faim to
scatter his energies over collateral subjects.

This rating system simply forces a foreman to forget per-
sonahlies — to forget everything other than the work in
hand. If he should select the people he Ukes instead of
the people who can best do the work, his department
record will quickly show up that fact.

There is no diflBculty in picking out men. They
pick themselves out because — although one hears a great
deal about the lack of opportunity for advancement —
the average workman is more interested in a steady job
than he is in advancement. Scarcely more than five per
cent, of those who work for wages, while they have the
desire to receive more money, have also the wiUingness to
accept the additional responsibihty and the additional
work which goes with the higher places. Only about
twenty-five per cent, are even willing to be straw bosses,
and most of them take that position because it carries
with it more pay than working on a machine. Men of a )
more mechanical turn of mind, but with no desire for
responsibility, go into the tool-making departments where
they receive considerably more pay than in production
proper. But the vast majority of men want to stay put.
They want to be led. They want to have everything
done for them and to have no responsibility. Therefore,
in spite of the great mass of men, the difficulty is not to
discover men to advance, but men who are willing to be
advanced.

The accepted theory is that all people are anxious for
advancement, and a great many pretty plans have been.
built up from that. I can only say tiia\.^e 4ci'n!c^%a!&^'^Ja2&.

lOQ MY LIFE AND WORK

to be the case. The Americans in our employ do want te
go ahead, but they by no means do always want to go
clear through to the t(^. The foreigners, generally speak-
ing, are content to stay as straw bosses. Why all of this
is, I do not know. I am giving the facts.

As I have said, everyone in the place reserves an open
mind as to the way in which every job is being done. If
there is any fixed theory — any fixed rule — it is that no
job is bmg done well enough. The whole factory
management is always open to suggestion, and we have an
informal suggestion syst^n by which any workman can
communicate any idea that comes to him and get action
on it.

The saving of a cent per piece may be distinctly worth
while. A saving of one cent on a part at our present
rate of production r^resents twelve thousand dollars
a year. One cent saved on each part would amount to
millions a year. TheTcfore, in comparing savings, the
calculations are carried out to the thousandth part of a
cent. If the new way suggested shows a saving and the
cost of making the change will pay for itself within a
reasonable time — say within three months — the change is
made practically as of coiu-se. These changes are by no
means limited to improvements which will increase produc-
tion or decrease cost. A great many — ^perhaps most of
them — are in the line of making the work easier. We do
not want any hard, man-killing work about the place, and
there is now very little of it. And usually it so works out
that adopting the way which is easier on the men also
decreases the cost. There is most intimate connection
between decency and good business. We also investigate
down to the last decimal whether it is cheaper to make or
to buy a part.

The suggestions come from everywhere. The Polish
rrorlcznen seem to be the cleverest of all of the foreigners

MACHINES AND MEN 101

in making them. One, who could not speak English,
indicated that if the tool in his machine were set at a
different angle it might wear longer. As it was it lasted
only four or five cuts. He was right, and a lot of money
was saved in grinding. Another Pole, running a drill
press, rigged up a little fixture to save handling the part
after drilling. That was adopted generally and a consider-
able saving resulted. The men often try out little attach-
ments of their own because, concentrating on one thing,
they can, if they have a mind that way, usually devise some
improvement. The cleanfiness of a man's machine also —
idthough cleaning a machine is no part of his duty — is us-*
ually an indication of his intelligence.

Here are some of the suggestions: A proposal that
castings be taken from the foundry to the machine shop
on an overhead conveyor saved seventy men in the trans-
port division. There used to be seventeen men — and
this was when production was smaller — taking the burrs
off gears, and it was a hard, nasty job. A man roughly
sketched a special machine. His idea was worked out and
the machine built. Now four men have several times the
output of the seventeen men — and have no hard work at
all to do. Changing from a sohd to a welded rod in
one part of the chassis effected an immediate saving of
about one half million a year on a smaller than the present-
day production. Making certain tubes out of flat sheets
instead of drawing them in the usual way effected another
enormous saving.

The old method of making a certain gear comprised four
operations and IS per cent, of the steel went into scrap.
We use most of our scrap and eventually we will use it all,
but that is no reason for not cutting down on scrap — ^thie
mere fact that all waste is not a dead loss is no excuse for
permitting waste. One of the workmen devised a very sim-
ple new method for making this gear in ^\a^^^wsE«:e'^«i

102 MY LIFE AND WORK

only one per cent. Again, the cam shaft has to have heat
treatment in order to make the surface hard ; the cam shafts
always came out of the heat-treat oven somewhat warped,
and even back in 1918, we employed 37 men just to
straighten the shafts. Several of our men experimented
for about a year and finally worked out a new form of
oven in which the shafts could not warp. In 1921, with
the production much larger than in 1918, we employed
only eight men in the whole operation.

And then there is the pressing to take away the necessity
for skill in any job done by any one. The old-time tool
hardener was an expert. He had to judge the heating
temperatures. It was a hit-or-miss operation. The
wonder is that he hit so often. The heat treatment in
the hardening of steel is highly important — providing one
knows exactly Uie ri^t heat to apply. That cannot be
known by rule-of-thumb. It has to be measured. We
introduced a system by which the man at the furnace has
nothing at all to do with the heat. He does not see the
pyrometer — the instrument which registers the tempera-
ture. Coloured electric lights give him his signals.

None of our machines is ever built haphazardly. The
idea is investigated in detail before a move is made.
Sometimes wooden models are constructed or again the
parts are drawn to full size on a blackboard. We are
not bound by precedent but we leave nothing to luck,
and we have yet to build a machine that will not do the
work for which it was designed. About ninety per cent,
of all experiments have been successful.

Whatever expertness in fabrication that has developed
has been due to men. I think that if men are unhampered
and they know that they are serving, they will always put
all of mind and will into even the most trivial of tasks.

CHAPTER Vn

The Terror of the Machine

REPETITIVE laboui^the doing of one tiling over
and over again and always in the same way — is a
■" terrifying prospect to a certain kind of mind.
It is terrifying to me. I could not possibly do the same
thing day in and day out, but to other minds, perhaps I
might say to the majority of minds, repetitive operations
hold no terrors. In fact, to some types of mind thought is
absolutely appalling. To them the ideal job is one where
the creative instinct need not be expressed. The jobs
where it is necessary to put in mind as well as muscle have
very few takers — ^we sJways need men who like a job
because it is difficult. The average worker, I am sorry to
say, wants a job in which he does not have to put forth
much physical exertion — above all, he wants a job in which
he does not have to think. Those who have what might
be called the creative type of mind and who thoroughly
abhor monotony are apt to imagine that all other minds
are similarly restless and therefore to extend quite un-
wanted sympathy to the labouring man who day in and
day out performs almost exactly the same operation.

When you come right down to it, most jobs are re-
petitive. A business man has a routine that he follows
with great exactness; the work of a bank president is
nearly all routine; the work of under officers and clerks
in a bank is purely routine. Indeed, for most purposes
and most people, it is necessary to establish something in
the way of a routine and to make most motions \ms<^
repetitive — otherwise the individual vnSi. iwA, %<5^. eassvv^

104 MY LIFE AND WORK

done to be able to live off his own exertions. Tb^re is no
reason why any one with a creative mind should be at a
monotonous job, for everywhere the need for creative men
is pressing. There will nev^ be a dearth of places for
skilled people, but we have to recognize that the will to be
skilled is not general. And even if the will be present, then
the courage to go through with the training is absent.
One cannot become skilled by mere wishing.

There are far too many assumptions about what
human nature ought to be and not enough research into
what it is. Take the assumption that creative work can
be undertaken only in the realm of vision. We speak of
creative "artists" in music, painting, and the other arts.
We seemingly limit the areative functions to productions
that may be hung on gallety walls, or played in concert
halls, or otherwise displayed where idle and fastidious
people gather to admire each other's culture. But if a man
wants a field for vital creative work, let him come where
he is dealing with higher laws than those of sound, or fine,
or colour; let him come where he may deal with the laws
of personaUty. We want artists in industrial relationship.
We want masters in industrial method — ^both from the
standpoint of the producer and the product. We want
those who can mould the political, social, industrial, and
moral mass into a sound and shapely whole. We have
limited the creative faculty too much and have used it
for too trivial ends. We want men who can create the
working design for all that is right and good and desirable
in our Ufe. Grood intentions plus well-thought-out work-
ing designs can be put into practice and can be made to
succeed. It is possible to increase the well-being of the
workingman — not by having him do less work, but by
aiding him to do more. If the world will give its attention
and interest and energy to the making of plans that will
proSt the other fellow as he is, then such phms can be

THE TERROR OF THE MACHINE l<Mi

established on a practical wor!^g basis. Such plans will
endure — and they will be far the most profitable both in
human and financial values. What this generation needs
is a deep faith, a profound conviction in the practicability
of righteousness, justice, and humanity in industry. If
we cannot have these qualities, then we were better off
without industry. Indeed, if we cannot get those qual-
ities, the days of industry are numbered. But we can get
them. We are getting them.

If a man cannot earn his keep without the aid of machin-
ery, is it benefitting him to withhold that machinery be-
cause attendance upon it may be monotonous? And let
him starve? Or is it better to put him in the way of a
good living? Is a man the happier for starving? K he is
the happier for using a machine to less than its capacity,
is he happier for producing less than he might and con-
sequently getting less than his share of the world's goods
in exchange?

I have not been able to discover that repetitive labour
injures a man in any way. I have been told by parlour
experts that repetitive labour is soul- as well -as body-
destroying, but that has not been the result of our in-
vestigations. There was one case of a man who all day
long did little but step on a treadle release. He thou^t
that the motion was making him one-sided; the medical
examination did not show that he had been affected but,
of course, he was changed to another job that used a
different set of muscles. In a few weeks he asked for his
old job again. It would seem reasonable to imagine that
going through the same set of motions daily for eight
hours would produce an abnormal body, but we have never
had a case of it. We shift men whenever they ask to be
shifted and we should like regularly to diange them — ^that
would be entirely feasible if only the men would have it
that way. They do not like changes v^cb. \ia.«a ^'a "osft.

106 BIY LIFE AND WOEK

themsdves suggest. Some of the operations are vju
doubtedly monotonous — so monotonous that it seems
scarcely possible that any man would care to continue long
at the same job. Probably the most monotonous task
in the whole factory is one in which a man pidcs up a gear
with a steel hook, shakes it in a vat of oil, then turns it into
a basket. The motion never varies. The gears come to
him always in exactly the same place, he gives each one the
same number of shakes, and he drops it into a basket which
is always in the same place. No muscular energy is re-
quired, no inteUigence is required. He does httle more
than wave his hands gently to and fro — the steel rod is so
light. Yet the man on that job has been doing it for eight
solid years. He has saved and invested his money until
now he has about forty thousand dollars — and he stub-
bornly resists every attempt to force him into a better job !

The most thorough research has not brought out a
single case of a man's mind being twisted or deadened by
the work. The kind of mind that does not Uke repetitive
work does not have to stay in it. The work in each
department is classified according to its desirability and
skill into Classes "A," "B," and "C," eadi class having
anywhere from ten to thirty different operations. A man
comes directly from the employment office to "Class C."
As he gets better he goes into "Class B," and so on into
"Class A," and out of "Class A" into tool making or some
supervisory capacity. It is up to him to place himself.
If he stays in production it is because he likes it.

In a previous chapter I noted that no one applying for
work is refused on account of physical condition. This
policy went into effect on January 12, 1914, at the time of
setting the minimum wage at five dollars a day and the
working day at eight hotirs. It carried with it the further
condition that no one should be discharged on account of
pbj^sical condition, except, of course, in the case of con*

THE TERROR OF THE MACHINE 107

talons disease. I think that if an industrial institu-
tion is to fill its whole r6le> it ought to be possible for
a cross-section of its employees to show about the same
proportions as a cross-section of a sodety in general.
We have always with us the maimed and the halt. There ;
is a most generous disposition to regard all of these people |
who are physically incapacitated for labour as a charge on
society and to support them by charity. There are cases
where I imagine that the support must be by charity — as,
for instance^ an idiot. But those cases are extraordinarily
rare, and we have found it possible, among the great num- jj I
ber of diflferent tasks that must be performed somewhere! /
in the company, to find an opening for almost any one andW
on the basis of production. The blind man or cripple can J
in the particular place to which he is assigned, perform!
]'ust as much work and receive exactly the same pay as|
a wholly able-bodied man would. We do hot prefer |
cripples — ^but we have demonstrated that they can earn
full wages.

It would be quite outside the spirit of what we are trying '•
to do, to take on men because they were crippled, pay |
them a lower wage, and be content with a lower output. |
That might be directly helping the men but it would not be
helping them in the best way. The best way is always the
way by which they can be put on a productive par with
able-bodied men. I believe that there is very little occasion
for charity in this world — ^that is, charity in the sense of
making gifts. Most certainly business and charity can-
not be combined ; the purpose of a factory is to produce, and
it ill serves the community in general unless it does produce
to the utmost of its capacity. We are too ready to assume
without investigation that the full possession of faculties
is a condition requisite to the best performance of all jobs.
To discover just, what was the real situation, IbaA^cS.
the different jobs in the factory cUissi&ed lo ^JaaVssA^

108 MY LIFE AND WORK

machine and work — ^whether the physical labour involved
was light, mediunii or heavy; whether it were a wet or a
dry job, uid if wet/with what kind of fluid ; whether it were'
clean or dirty; near an oven or a furnace; the condition of
the air; whether one or both hands had to be used; whether
the employee stood or sat down at his work; whether it was
noisy or quiet; whether it required accuracy; whether the
Kght was natural or artificial; the number of pieces that
had to be handled per hour; the weight of the material
handled; and the description of the strain upon the
worker. It turned out at the time of the inquiry that
there were then 7,882 different jobs in the factory. Of
these, 949 were classified as heavy work requiring strong,
able-bodied, and practically physically perfect men;
3,338 required men of ordinary physical development and
strength. The remaining 3,595 jobs were disclosed as
requiring no physical exertion and could be performed by
the slightest, weakest sort of men. In fact, most of them
could be satisfactorily filled by women or older children.
'( The lightest jobs were again classified to discover howmany
\' of them required the use of full faculties, and we found that
670 could be filled by legless men, 2,637 by one-legged men,
2 by armless men, 715 by one-armed men, and 10 by blind
men. Therefore, out of 7,882 kinds of jobs, 4,034 —
although some of them required strength — did not require
full physical capacity. That is, developed industry can pro-
vide wage work for a higher average of standard men tiian
are ordinarily included in any normal community. If the
jobs in any one industry or, say, any one factory, were
analyzed as ours have been analyzed, the proportion might
be very different, yet I am quite sure that if work is siif-
ficiently subdivided — subdivided to the point of highest
economy — there will be no dearth of places in which the
physically incapacitated can do a man's job and get a
man's wage. It is economically most wasteful to accept

THE TERROR OF THE MACHINE 10»

crippled men as diarges and then to teacfa them trivial
tasks like the weaving of baskets or some other form of
unremunerative hand labour, in the hope, not of aiding
tiiem to make a living, but of preventing despondency.

When a man is taken on by the Employment Depart-
ment, the theory is to put him into a job suited to his
condition. If he is already at work and he does not seem
able to perform the work, or if he does not like his work,
he is given a transfer card, which he takes up to the transfer
department,and after an examination he is triedout in some
other work more suited to his condition or disposition.
Those who are below the ordinary physical standards are
just as good workers, rightly placed, as those who are
above. For instance, a blind man was assigned to the stock
department to count bolts and nuts for shipment to branch
establishments. Two other able-bodied men were already
employed on this work. In two days the foreman sent a
note to the transfer department releasing the able-bodied
men because the blind man was able to do not only his own
work but also the work that had formerly been done by
the sound men.

This salvage can be carried further. It is usually
taken for granted that when a man is injured he is simply
out of the running and should be paid an allowance.
But there is always a period of convalescence, especially in
fracture cases, where the man is strong enough to work,
and, indeed, by that time usually anxious to work, for
the largest possible accident allowance can never be as
great as a man's wage. If it were, then a business would
simply have an additional tax put upon It, and that tax
would show up in the cost of the product. There would
be less buying of the product and therefore less work for
somebody. That is an inevitable sequence that must al-
ways be borne in mind.

We have e:5)erimented with l)ednd4«Q. xdkq:— 'B^Si. "^Jaa

110 MY LIFE AND WORK

were able to sit up. We put black oilcloth covers oi
aprons over the beds and set the men to work screwing
nuts on small bolts. This is a job that has to be done by
hand and on which fifteen or twenty men are kept busy
in the Magneto Department. The men in the hospital
could do it just as well as the men in the shop and they
were able to receive their regular wages. In fact, their
production was about 20 per cent., I believe, above the
usual shop production. No man had to do the work
unless he wanted to. But they all wanted to. It kept
time from hanging on their hands. They slept and ate
better and recovered more rapidly.

No particular consideration has to be given to deaf-and-
dumb employees. They do their work one hundred per
cent. The tubercular employees — and there are usually
about a thousand of them — ^mostly work in the material
salvage department. Those cases which are considered
contagious work together in an especially constructed
shed. The work of all of them is largely out of doors.

At the time of the last analysis of employed, there were
9,563 sub-standard men. Of these, 123 had crippled or
amputated arms, forearms, or hands. One had both
hands off. There were 4 totally blind men, 207 blind in
one eye, 253 with one eye nearly blind, 37 deaf and dumb,
60 epileptics, 4 with both legs or feet missing, 234 with one
foot or leg missing. The others had minor impediments.

The length of time required to become proficient in the
various occupations is about as follows: 43 per cent, of all
the jobs require not over one day of training; 36 per cent,
require from one day to one week; 6 per cent, require from
one to two weeks; 14 per cent, require from one month to
one year; one per cent, require from one to six years. The
last jobs require great skill — as in tool making and die
sinking.

Tbe discipUne throughout the plant is rigid. There are

THE TERROR OF THE MACHINE 111

no petty rules, and no rules the justice of which can
reasonably be disputed. The injustice of arbitrary dis-
cbarge is avoided by confining the right of discharge to the
employment manager, and he rarely exercises it. The
year 1919 is the last on which statistics were kept. In
, that year 30,153 changes occurred. Of those 10,334 were
absent more than ten days without notice and therefore
; dropped. Because they refused the job assigned or,
without ^ving cause, demanded a transfer, 3,702 were let
I go. A refusal to learn Enghsh in the school provided
i accounted for 38 more; 108 enlisted; about 3,000 were
; transferred to other plants. Going home, going into
: farming or business accounted for about the same number.
I Eigbty-two women were discharged because their hus-
i bands were working — ^we do not employ married women
[ whose husbands have jobs. Out of the whole lot only 80
were flatly discharged and the causes were: Misrep-
resentation, 56; by order of Educational Department, 20;
and undesirable, 4.

We expect the men to do what they are told. The

organization is so highly specialized and one part is so

dependent upon another that we could not for a moment

consider allowing men to have their own way. Without

the most rigid discipline we would have the utmost

confusion. I think it shoiUd not be otherwise in industry.

I The men are there to get the greatest possible amount of

I work done and to receive the highest possible pay. If each

, man were permitted to act in his own way, production

woidd suffer and therefore pay would suffer. Any one who

does not like to work in our way may always leave. The

company's conduct toward the men is meant to be exact

■ and impartial. It is naturally to the interest both of the

; foremen and of the department heads that the releases

from their departments should be few. The workman has

afuUchanceto tell his story if he has been. vai\\is^^Vw*\ft^. —

112 MY LIFE AND WORK '^;

he has full recourse. Of course, it k inevitable that
injustices occur. Men are not always fair with their
fellow workmen. Defective human nature obstructs our I
good intentions now and then. Hie foreman does not
always get the idea, or misapplies it — ^but the company's
intentions are as I have stated, and we use every means to'
have them imderstood.

It is necessary to be most iofistent in the matter of
absences. A man may not come or go as he pleases; he may
always apply for leave to the foreman, but if he leaves
without notice, then, on his return, the reasons for his
absence are carefully investigated and are sometimes,
referred to the Medical Department. If his reasons are
good, he is permitted to resume work. If they are not
good he may be dischai^d. In hiring a man the only
data taken concerns bis name, his address, his age,
whether he is married or single, the number of his de-
pendents, whether he has ever worked for the Ford
Motor Company, and the condition of his sight and his
hearing. No questions are asked concerning what the
man has previously done, but we have what we call the
" Better Advantage Notice, " by which a man who has had
a trade before he came to us files a notice with the employ-
ment department stating what the trade was. In this way,
when we need specialists of any kind, we can get them right
out of production. This is also one of the avenues by
which tool makers and moulders quickly reach the higher
positions. I once wanted a Swiss watch maker. The
cards turned one up — ^he was running a drill press. The
Heat Treat department wanted a skilled firebrick layer.
He also was found on a drill press — he is now a general
inspector.

There is not much personal contact — the men do their
work and go home — a factory is not a drawing room.
^uf. we try to have justice and, while there may be httle

THE TERROR OF THE MACHINE 113

in the way of hand shaking — we have no professional
hand shakers — also we try to prevent opportunity for
petty personalities. We have so many depMtmenta that
the place is almost a world in itself — every kind of man
can find a place somewhere in it. Take fighting between
men. Men will fight, and usually fighting is a cause for
discharge on the spot. We find that does not help the
fighters — it merely gets them out (rf our sight. So the
foremen have become rather ingaiious in devising pun-
ishments that will not take anything away from the man's
family and which require no time at all to administer.

One point that is absolutely essential to high capacity,
as weU. as to humane production, is a clean, well-lighted
and well-ventilated factory. Our machines are placed
very close together — every foot of floor space in the fac-
'tory carries, of course, the same overhead charge. The
consumer must pay the extra overhead and tiie extra
transportation involved in having machines even six inches
farther apart than they have to be. We measure on each
job the exact amount of room that a man needs; he must
not be cramped — that would be waste. But if he and his
machine occupy more space than is required, that also is
waste. This brings our machines closer together than in
probably any other factory in the world. To a stranger
they may seem piled right on top of one another, but they
arc scientifically arranged, not only in the sequence of
operations, but to give every man and eveiy machine eveiy
square inch that he requires and, if possible, not a square
inch, and certainly not a square foot, more than he requires.
Our factory buildings are not intended to be used as
parks. The close placing requires a maximum of safe-
guards and ventilation.

Machine safeguarding is a subject all of itself. We do
not consider any machine — no matter how efficientiy it
m&y turn out its work — as a proper maxianft \H^<raB.\v.Na.

114 MY LIFE AND WORK

absolutely safe. We have no machines that we consideT
unsafe, but even at that a few accidents will happen.
Every accidentj no matter how trivial, is traced back by a
skilled man employed solely for that purpose, and a study
is made of the machine to make that same accident in the
future impossible.

When we put up the older buildings, we did not under-
stand so much about ventilation as we do to-day. In all
the later buildings, the supporting columns are made
hollow and through them the bad air is pumped out and
the good air introduced. A nearly even temperature is
kept everywhere the year round and, during daylight,
there is nowhere the necessity for artificial hght. Some-
thing like seven hundred men are detailed exclusively to
keeping the shops clean, the windows washed, and all of
the paint fresh. The dark comers which invite e3q>ectora-
tion are painted white. One cannot have morale without
cleanliness. We tolerate makeshift cleanliness no more
than makeshift methods.

No reason exists why factory work should be dangerous.
If a man has worked too hard or through too long hours
he gets into a mental state that invites accidents. Part of
the work of preventing accidents is to avoid this mental
state; part is to prevent carelessness, and part is to make
machinery absolutely fool-proof. The principal causes of
accidents as they are grouped by the experts are:

(1) Defective structures; (2) defective machines;
(3) insufficient room; (4) absence of safeguards; (5)
imclean conditions; (6) bad lights; (7) bad air; (8)
unsuitable clothing; (9) carelessness; (10) ignorance;
(11) mental condition; (12) lack of coGperation.

The questions of defective structures, defective machin-
ery, insufficient room, unclean conditions, bad Hght,
bad air, the wrong mental condition, and the lack of
oibr disposed of. None of the men work

THE TERROR OF THE MACHINE H5

too hard. The wages settle nine tenths of the mental
problems and construction gets rid of the others. We have
then to guard against unsuitable clothing, carelessness,
and ignorance, and to make everything we have fool-proof.
This is more diflficult where we have belts. In all of our new
construction, each machine has its individual electric motor,
but in the older construction we had to use belts. Every
belt is guarded. Over the automatic conveyors are
placed bridges so that no man has to cross at a dangerous
point. Wherever there is a possibility of flying metal, the
workman is required to wear goggles and the chances are
further reduced by surrounding the machine with netting.
Around hot fiuiiaces we have railings. There is nowhere
an open part of a machine in which dlothing can be caught.
All the aisles are kept clear. The starting switches of
draw presses are protected by big red tags which have to
be removed before the switch can be turned — ^this pre-
vents the machine being started thoughtlessly. Workmen
will wear xmsuitable clothing — ties that may be cau^t in
a pulley, flowing sleeves, and all manner of imsuitable
articles. The bosses have to watch for that, and they
catch most of the offenders. New machines are tested in
every way before they are permitted to be installed. As
a result we have practically no serious accidents.
Industry needs not exact a hiunan toU.

CHAPTER Vin

Wages

THERE is nothing to running a business by custom
— to saying: "I pay the going rate of wages."
The same man would not so easily say: "I have
nothing better or cheaper to sell than any one has."
No manufacturer in his right mind would contend that
buying only the cheapest materials is the way to make
certain of manufacturing the best article. Then why do
we hear so much talk about the " Uquidation of labour " and
the benefits that will flow to the country from cutting wages
— which means only the cutting of buying power and the
curtailing of the home market? What good is indtistry if
it be so unskillfully managed as not to return a living to
everyone concerned? No question is more important
than that of wages — ^most of the people of the country live
on wages. The scale of their hving — the rate of their
wages— determines the prosperity of the country.

Throughout all the Ford industries we now have a
minimmn wage of six dollars a day; we used to have a
minimum of five dollars; before that we paid whatever it
was necessary to pay. It would be bad morals to go back
to the old market rate of paying — but also it would be the
worst sort of bad business.

First get at the reUtionships. It is not usual to speak
of an employee as a partner, and yet what dse is he?
Whenever a man finds the management of a business too
much for his own time or strength, he calls in assistants to
share the management with him. Why, then, if a man
finds the production part of a business too much for his

WAGES lir

own two hands should he deny the title of "partner'*
to those who come in and help him produce? Every
business that employs more than one man is a kind of
partnership. Hie moment a man calls for assistance in
his busings — even though the assistant be but a boy —
that moment he has taken a partner. He may himself
be sole owner of the resources of the business and sole
director of its opa?ations, but only while he remains sole
manager and sole producer can he claim complete in-
dependence. No xoaa is independent as long as he has to
depend on another man to help him. It is a reciprocal
relation— the boss is the partner of his worker, the worker
is partner of his boss. And such being the case, it is use-
less for one group or the other to assume that it is the one
indispensable unit. Both are indispensable. The one
can become unduly assertive only at the ea:pense of the
other — and eventually at its own expense as well. It is ut-
terly foolish for Capital or for Labour to think of themselves
as groups. They are partners. Wh«i they pull and haul
against each other — they simply injure the organization
in which they are partners and from which both draw
support.

It ought to be the employer's ambition, as leader,
to pay better wages than any similar line of business, and it
ought to be the workman's ambition to make this possible.
Of course there are men in all shops who seem to beUeve
that if they do their best, it will be only for the employer's
benefit — and not at all for their own. It is a pity that
such a feeling should exist. But it does exist and perhaps
it has some justification. If an employer urges men to do
their best, and the men learn after a while that their best
does not bring any reward, then they naturally drop back
into "getting by." But if they see Ibe fruits of hard
work in their pay envelope — ^proof that harder work means
higher pay — then also they be^ to Veaxu. Mu^ "Coss^ "asR- *■

118 MY LIFE AND WORK

part of the business, and that its success d^>ends on them
and their succ^s depends on it.

"What ought the employer to pay?" — ^'What ought
the employee to receive? " These are but minor questions.
The basic question is "What can the business stand?"
Certainly no business can stand outgo that exceeds its
income. When you pump water out of a well at a faster
rate than the water flows in, the well goes dry. And when
the well runs diy, those who depend on it go thirsty. And
if, perchance, they imagine they can pump one well dry
and then jmnp to some other well, it is only a matter of
time when all the wells will be dry. There is now a wide-
spread demand for more justly divided rewards, but it
must be recognized that there are limits to rewards. The
business itself sets the limits. You cannot distribute
$150,000 out of a business that brings m only $100,000.
The business hmits the wages, but does anythiag limit the
business? The business limits itself by following bad pre-'
cedents.

If men, instead of saying "the employer ought to do
thus-and-so," would say, "the business ought to be so
stimulated and managed that it can do thus-and-so,"
they would get somewhere. Because only the business
can pay wages. Certainly the employer cannot, unless
the business warrants. But if that business does warrant
higher wages and the employer refuses, what is to be done?
As a rule a business means the Hvelihood of too many men,
to be tampered with. It is criminal to assassinate a busi-
ness to which large numbers of men have given their
labours and to which they have learned to look as their field
of usefulness and their source of hvelihood. Killing the
business by a strike or a lockout does not help. The em-
ployer can gain nothing by looking over the employees and
asking himself, "How little can I get them to take?"
Nor the employee by faring back and asking, "How

WAGES 119

much can I force him to give?" Eventually both will
have to turn to the business and ask, "How can this
industry be made safe and profitable, so that it will be
able to provide a sure and comfortable living for all of us ? "

But by no means aU employers or all employees will
think straight. The habit of acting shortsightedly is a
hard one to break. What can be done? Nothing. No |-,V:t
rules or laws will effect the changes. But enlightened ;;!<.'
self-interest will. It takes a little while for enlighten- ■ / ! V
ment to spread. But spread it must, for the concern in
which both employer and employees work to the same end
of service is bound to forge ahead in business.

What do we mean by high wages, anyway?

We mean a higher wage than was paid ten months or
ten years ago. We do not mean a higher wage than ought
to be paid. Our high wages of to-day may be low wages
ten years from now.

If it is right for the manager of a business to tiy to make
it pay larger dividends, it is quite as right that he should
try to make it pay higher wages. But it is not the
manager of the business who pays the high wages. Of
course, if he can and will not, then the blame is on him.
But he alone can never make high wages possible. High
wages cannot be paid xmless the workmen earn them.
Their labour is the productive factor. It is not the only
productive factor — ^poor management can waste labour and
material and nullify the efforts of labour. Labour can
nullify the results of good management. But in a partner-
ship of skilled management and honest labour, it is the
workman who makes high wages possible. He invests his
energy and skill, and if he makes an honest, whole-
hearted investment, high wages ou^t to be his reward.
Not only has he earned them, but he has had a big part in
creating them.

It ought to be dear, however, tlial tiie\a^'^a%e.\ie,'©s>a

120 MY LIFE AND WORK

r down in the shop. If it is not created there it cannot

' 1 get into pay envelopes. There will never be a system

\ invented which will do away with the necessity of work.

; jNature has seen to that. Idle hands and minds were

Eever intended for any one of us. Work is our sanity,
ur self-respect, our salvation. So far from being a curse,
^ork is the greatest blessing. Exact social justice flows
/ only out of honest work. The man who contributes
much should take away much. Therefore no element of
charity is present in the paying of wages. The kind of
workman who gives the business the best that is in him
is the best kind of workman a business can have. And he
cannot be expected to do this indefinitely without proper
recognition of his contribution. The man who comes
to the day's job feeling that no matter how much he may
give, it wiU not yield him enough of a return to keep him
beyond want, is not in shape to do his day's work. He is
anxious and worried, and it all reacts to the detriment of bis
work.

But if a man feels that hb day's work is not only
supplying his basic need, but is also giving him a margin
of comfort and enabling him to give his boys and girls
their opportunity and his wife some pleasure in life, then
his job looks good to him and he is free to give it of his
best. This is a good thing for him and a good thing for
the business. The man who does not get a certain satisfac-
tion out of his day's work is losing the best part of his pay.

For the day's work is a great thing — a very great thing!
It is at the very foundation of the world; it is the basis
of our self-respect. And the employer ought constantly
to put in a harder day's work than any of his men.
The employer who is seriously trying to do his duty
in the world must be a hard worker. He cannot say,
"I have so many thousand men working for me." The

^^ c/^Ae matter is that so maiL^ thousand men have hin^

WAGES 121

working for them — and the better they work the busier
they keep him disposing of their products. Wages and
salaries are in fixed amoimts, and this must be so, in order
to have a basis to figure on. Wages and salaries are a sort
of profit^aring fixed in advance, but it often happens
that when the business of the year is closed, it is discovered
that more can be paid. And then more ought to be paid.
When we are all in the business working together, we all
ought to have some share in the profits — by way of a good
wage, or salary, or added compensation. And that is be-
ginning now quite generally to be recognized.

There is now a definite demand that the human side of
business be elevated to a position of equal importance
with the material side. And that is going to come about.
It is just a question whether it is going to be brought about
wisely — in a way that will conserve the material side which
now sustains us, or unwisely and in such a way as shall
take from us all the benefit of the work of the past years.
Business represents our national Uvelihood, it reflects our
economic progress, and gives us our place among other
nations. We do not want to jeopardize that. What we
want is a better recognition of the human element in busi-
ness. And surely it can be achieved without dislocation,
without loss to any one, indeed with an increase of benefit
to every human being. And the secret of it all is in a rec-
ognition of human partnership. Until each man is abso-
lutely sufiicient unto himself, needing the services of
no other human being in any capacity whatever, we shall
never get beyond the need of partnership.

Such are the fxmdamental truths of wages. They are
partnership distributions.

When can a wage be considered adequate? How much
of a living is reasonably to be expected from work? Have
you evOT considered what a wage does or o\i%tA, \r> ^"^"^
To say that it should pay the cost ot U\m^ S& ^» ?»:s ^ssva^

122 MY LIFE ANB WORK

nothing. The cost of living depends largely upon the
efficiency of production and transportation; and the effi-
ciency of these is the sum of the efficiencies of the manage-
ment and the workers. Good work, well managed, ought
to result in high wages and low living costs. If we at-
tempt to regulate wages on living costs, we get nowhere.
The cost of hving is a result and we cannot expect to keep
a result constant if we keep altering the factors which pro-
duce the result. When we try to regulate wages accord-
ing to the cost of hying, we are imitating a dog chasing
his tail. And, anyhow, who is competent to say just what
kind of Uving we shall base the costs onP Let us broaden
our view and see what a wage is to the workmen — and
what it ought to be.

Tlie wage carries all the worker's obligations outside
the shop; it carrira cdl that is necessary in the way of
service and management inside the shop. The day's
productive work is the most valuable mine of wealth that
has ever been opened. Certainly it ought to bear not
less than all the worker's outside obligatitms. And cer-
tainly it ought to be made to take care of the worker's
sunset days when labour is no longer possible to him — and
should be no longer necessary. And if it is made to do
even these, industry will have to be adjusted to a schedule
of production, distribution, and reward, which will stop
the leaks Into the pockets of men who do not assist in pro-
duction. In order to create a system which shall be as in-
dependent of the good-will of benevolent employers as of
the ill-will of selfi^ ones, we shall have to find a basis in
the actual facte of life itself.

It costs just as much physical strength to turn out a
day's work when wheat is $1 a bushel, as when wheat is
$2.50 a bushel. Eggs may be 12 cents a dozen or 90 cents
a dozen. What difference does it make in the units of
^ergy a man uses in a productive day's work?

WAGES 129

If only the man himself were concenied, the cost of his
maintenance and the profit he oug^t to have would be a
simple matter. But he is not just an individual. He is a
citizen, contributing to the welfare of the nation. He ia
a householder. He is perhaps a father with children who
must be reared to usefulness on what he is able to earn.
We must reckon with all these facts. How are you going
to figure the contribution of the home to the day's work?
You pay the man for his work, but how much does that
work owe to his home? How much to his position as a
citizen? How much to his position as a father? The man
does the work in the shop, but his wife does the work in
the home. The shop must pay them both. On what sys-
tem of figuring is the home going to find its place on the
cost sheets of the day's work? Is the man's own liveh-
hood to be regarded as the "cost"? And is his abihty to
have a home and family the "profit"? Is the profit on a
day's work to be computed on a cash basis only, measured
by the amount a man has left over after his own and his
family's wants are all supplied? Or are all these rela-
tionships to be considered strictly under head of cost, and
the profit to be computed entirely outside of them?
That is, after having supported himself and family, clothed
them, housed them, educated them, ^ven them the privi-
leges incident to their standard of living, ought there to
be provision made for still something more in the way of
savings profit? And are all properly chargeable to the
day's work? I think they are. Otherwise, we have the
hideous prospect of Httle children and their mothers being
forced out to work.

These are questions which call for accurate observation
and computation. Perhaps there is no one item con-
nected with our economic life that would stu-prise us more
than a knowledge of just what burdens the day's wotk
carries.

124' MY LIFE AND WORK

It is perhaps possible accurately to determine — albeit
with considerable interference with the day's work itself
— ^how much energy the day's work takes out of a man.
But it is not at all possible accurately to determine how
much it will require to put back that energy into him
against the next day's demands. Nor is it possible to de-
termine how much of that expended energy he will never be
able to get back at all. Economics has never yet devised
a sinking fund for the replacement of the strength of a
worker. It is possible to set up a kind of sinking fund in
the form of old-age pensions. But pensions do not attend
to the profit which each day's labom- ought to yield in order
to take care of all of life's overhead, of all physical losses,
and of the inevitable deterioration of the manual worker.

The best wages that have up to date ever been paid are
not nearly as high as they ought to be. Business is not
yet sufficiently well organized and its objectives are not
yet sufficiently clear to make it possible to pay more than
a fraction of the wages that ought to be paid. That is
part of the work we have before us. It does not help
toward a solution to talk about aboHshing the wage system
and substituting communal ownership. The wage system
is the only one that we have, under whidi contributions to
production can be rewarded according to their worth.
Take away the wage measure and we shall have universal
injustice. Perfect the system and we may have imiversal
justice.

I have learned through the years a good deal about
wages. I believe in the first place that, all other con-
siderations aside, our own sales depend in a measure upon
the wages we pay. If we can distribute high wages, then
that money is going to be spent and it will serve to make
storekeepers and distributors and manufacturers and
workers in other lines more prosperous and their prosper-
ity will be reflected in our sales. Country-wide hijEh

WAGES 125,

wages spell country-wide prosperity, provided, however,
the higher wages are paid for higher production. Faying
high wages and lowering production is starting down the
incline toward dull business.

It took us some time to get our bearings on wages, and
it was not until we had gone thoroughly into production
on "Model T," that it was possible to figure out what
wages ought to be. Before then we had had some profit
sharing. We had at the end of each year, for some years
past, divided a percentage of our earnings with the em-
ployees. For instance, as long ago as 1909 we distributed
eighty thousand dollars on the basis of years of service.
A one-year man received 5 per cent, of his year's wages;
a two-year man, 7J per cent., and a three-year man, 10
per cent. The objection to that plan was that it had
no direct connection with the day's work. A man did
not get his share until long after his work was done
and then it came to him almost in the way of a pres-
ent. It is always unfortunate to have wages tinged with
charity.

And then, too, the wages were not scientifically adjusted
to the jobs. The man in job "A" might get one rate and
the man in job "B" a higher rate, while as a matter of
fact job "A" mi^t require more skill or exertion than job
"B." A great deal of inequity creeps into wage rates im-
less both the employer and the employee know that the
rate paid has been arrived at by something better than a
guess. Therefore, starting about 1913 we had time
studies made of all the thousands of operations in the shops.
By a time study it is possible theoretically to determine
what a man's output should be. Then, making large
allowances, it is further possible to get at a satisfactory
standard output foe a day, and, taking into consideration
the skill, to arrive at a rate which will express with fair
accuracy the amount of skill and exertion. \!b»X %<aeaNs!\3a

I2tf MY LIFE AND WORK

a job— find how much is to be expected from the man in
the job in return for the wage. Without scientific study
the employer does not know why he is paying a wage and
the worker does not know why he is getting it. On the
time figures all of the jobs in our factory were standardized
and rates set.

We do not have piece work. Some of the men are
paid by the day and some are paid by the hour, but in
practically every case there is a required standard output
below which a man is not e?q>ected to fall. Were it
otherwise, neither the workman nor ourselves would know
whether or not wages were being earned. There must be
a fixed day's work before a real wage can be paid. Watch-
men are paid for presence. Workmen are paid for work.
Having these facts in hand we announced and put into
operation in January, 1914, a kind of profit-sharing plan
in which the minimum wage for any class of work and
under certain conditions was five dollars a day. At the
same time we reduced the working day to eight hours — ^it
had been nine — and the week to forty-eight hours. This
was entirely a voluntary act. All of our wage rates have
'■■ been voluntary. It was to our way of thinking an act of
; social justice, and in the^last analysis we did it for our own
I satisfaction of mind.^''There is a pleasure in feeling that
, you have made others happy — that you have lessened
in some degree the bxu^ens of your fellow-men — ^that you
have provided a mar^ out of which may be had pleasiu*
■ and saving. Good-will is one of the few really important
assets of Hfe. A determined man can win almost any-
thing that he goes after, but unless, in his getting, he
gains good will he has not profited much.

There was, however, no charity in any way involved.
That was not generally imderstood. Many employers
thought we were just making the announcement because
$re were prosperous and wanted advertising and they

WAGES 127

condemned us because we were upsetling standards —
violating the custom of paying a man the smallest amount
he would take. There is nothing to such standards and
customs. They have to be wiped out. Some day they
will be. Otherwise, we cannot abolish poverty. We made
the change not merely because we wanted to pay hi^er
wages and thought we could pay them. We wanted to pay
these wages so that the business would be on a lasting
f oimdation. We were not distributing anything — ^we were
building for the future. A low wage business is ^ways in-
seciu*.

Probably few industrial announcements have created
a more world-wide comment than did this one, and hardly
any one got the facts quite right. Workmen quite
generally believed that they were going to get five dollars
a day, regardless of what work they did.

The facts were somewhat di£ferent from the general
impression. The plan was to distribute profits, but in-
stead of waiting imtil the profits had been earned — ^to
approximate them in advance and to add them, imder
certain conditions, to the wages of those persons who had
been in the employ of Ihe company for six months or more.
It was classified participation among three classes of
employees:

(1) Married men living with and taking good care of
their families.

(2) Single men over twenty-two years of age who are
of proved thrifty habits.

(3) Young men under twenty-two years of age. Mid
women who are the sole support of some next of kin.

A man was first to be paid his just wages — which were
then on an average of about fifteen per cent, above the
usual market wage. He was then ehgible to a certain
profit. His wages plus his profit were calculated to give
a Tninimiim daily income of fiive d.o^i^Bx^. ^^}w& ■^ksS^^

128 MY LIFE AND WORK

sharing rate was divided on an hour basis and was credited
to the hourly wage rate, so as to give those receiving the
lowest hourly rate the largest proportion of profits. It was
paid every two weeks with the wages. For example, a man
who received thirty-four cents an hour had a profit rate of
twenty-eight and one half cents an hour — ^which would
^ve him a daily income of five dollars. A man receiving
fifty-four cents an hoxu* would have a profit rate of twenty-
one cents an hour — which would give him a daUy income
of six dollars.

It was a sort of prosperity-sharing plan. But on
conditions. The man and his home had to come up to
certain standards of cleanliness and dtizenship. Nothing
paternal was intended! — a certain amount of patemaUsm
did develop, and that is one reason why the whole plan and
the social welfare department were readjusted. But in
the beginning the idea was that there should be a very
definite incentive to better living and that the very best
incentive was a money premium on proper living. A man
who is living aright will do his work aright. And then, too,
we wanted to avoid the possibility of lowering the standard
of work through an increased wage. It was demonstrated
in war time that too quickly increasing a man's pay
sometimes increases only his cupidity and therefore
decreases his earning power. If, in the beginning, we had
simply put the increase in the pay envelopes, then very
likely the work standards would have broken down. The
pay of about half the men was doubled in the new plan;
it mi^t have been taken as "easy money. " The thought
of easy money breaks down work. There is a danger
in too rapidly raising the pay of any man — whether he
previously received one doUar or one hundred dollars a
day. In fact, if the salary of a htmdred-doUar-a-day
man were increased overnight to three hundred dollars
& day he would probably make a bigger fool of himself

WAGES 129

than the working man whose pay is increased from one
dollar to three dollars an hour. The man with the larger
amoimt of money has larger opportunity to make a fool of

himself.

In this first plan the standards insisted upon were not
petty — although sometimes they may have been ad-
ministered in a petty fashion. We had about fifty
investigators in the Social Department; the standard of
common sense among them was very high indeed, but it is
impossible to assemble fifty men equally endowed with
common sense. They erred at times — one always hears
about the errors. It was expected that in order to receive
the bonus married men should live with and take proper
care of their famiUes. We had to break up the evil
custom among many of the foreign workers of taking in
boarders — of regarding their homes as something to make
money out of rather than as a place to live in. Boys under
eighteen received a bonus if they supported the next of kin.
Single men who Uved wholesomely shared. The best
evidence that the plan was essentially beneficial is the
record. When the plan went into effect, 60 per cent, of the
workers immediately qualified to share; at the end of six
months 78 per cent, were sharing, and at the end of one
year 87 per cent. Within a year and one half only a
fraction of one per cent, failed to share.

The large wage had other results. In 1914, when the
first plan went into effect, we had 14,000 employees and it
had been necessary to hire at the rate of about 53,000 a
year in order to keep a constant force of 14,000. In 1915
we had to hire only 6,508 men and the majority of these
new men were taken on because of the growth of the
business. With the old turnover of labour and oxn* present
force we should have to hire at the rate of nearly 200,000
men a year — which would be pretty nearly an im^QssvWs,
proposition. Even with the nunimvim. ol \ns'tr4.';^vs^'^tis&.

180 MY LIFE AND WORK

is required to master almost any job in our place, we cannot
take on a new staff each moming, or eadi week, or eadi
month; for, although a man may qualify for acceptable
work at an acceptable rate of speed within two or three
days, he will be able to do more after a year's experience
than he did at the beginning. The matter of labour
turnover has not since bothered us; it is rather hard to
pve exact figures because when we are not running to
capacity, we rotate some of the men in order to distribute
tiie work among greatest number. This makes it hard
to distinguish between the voluntary and involuntary
exits. To-day we keep no figures; we now think so little
of our turnover that we do not bother to keep records.
As far as we know the turnover is somewhere between
S per cent, and 6 per cent, a month.

We have made changes in the system, but we have not
deviated from this principle:

If you expect a man to give his time and energy, fix
his wages so that he will have no financial worries. It
pays. Our profits, after pajang good wages and a
bonus — ^which bonus used to run around ten miUions a
year before we changed the system — show that paying
good wages is the most profitable way of doing business.

There were objections to the bonus-on-conduct method
of paying wages. It tended toward paternalism. Pa-
ternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that
consists in prying into employees' private concerns is
out of date. Men need coxmsel and men need help,
oftentimes special help; and all this ought to be rendered
for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of
investment and participation will do more to solidify
industry and strengthen organization than will any social
work on the outside.

Without changing the prindple we have changed the
method ofpaymait.

CHAPTERIX

Why Not Always Have Good Business?

THE employer has to live by the year. The work-
man has to hve by the year. But both of them^
as a rule, work by the week. ITiey get an order
or a job when they can and at the price they can. During
what is called a prosperous time, orders and jobs are
plentiful. During a "dull" season they are scarce.
Business is always either feasting or fasting and is always
either "good" or "bad." Although there is never a time
when everyone has too much of this world's goods — ^when
everyone is too comfortable or too happy — ^there come
periods when we have the astounding spectacle of a
world hungry for goods and an industrial machine hungry
for work and the two — the demand and the means
of satisfying it — held apart by a money barrier. Both
manufacturing and employment are in-and-out aflfairs.
Instead of a steady progression we go ahead by fits
and starts — now going too fast, now stopping alto-
gether. "When a great many people want to buy, there
is said to be a shortage of goods. When nobody wants
to buy, there is said to be an overproduction of goods.
I know that we have always had a shortage of goods,
but I do not believe we have ever had an over-
production. We may have, at a particular time, too
much of the wrong kind of goods. That is not over-
production — that is merely headless production. We
may also have great stocks of goods at too high prices.
That is not overproduction — it is either bad manufajetMS-
ing or bad finaocing. Is business good ot \iaA aeKs«^^5ist

132 MY LIFE AND WORK

to the dictates of fate? Must we accept the conditions
as inevitable? Business is good or bad as we make it so.
The only reason for growing crops, for' mining, or for
manufacturing, is that people may eat, keep warm, have
clothing to wear, and articles to use. Ttere is no other
possible reason, yet that reason is forced into the back-
ground and instead we have operations carried on, not to
the end of service, but to the end of making money — and
this because we have evolved a system of money that
instead of being a convenient medixmi of exchange, is at
times a barrier to exchange. Of this more later.

We suffer frequent periods of so-called bad luck only
because we manage so badly. If we had a vast crop
failure, I can imagine the country going hungry, but I
cannot conceive how it is that we tolerate hunger and
poverty, when they grow solely out of bad management,
and especially out of the bad management that is im-
plicit in an unreasoned financial structure. Of course
the war upset affairs in this country. It upset the whole
world. There would have been no war had management
been better. But the war alone is not to blame. The war
showed up a great number of the defects of the financial
system, but more than anything else it showed how in-
secure is business supported only by a money foundation.
I do not know whether bad business is the result of bad
financial methods or whether the wrong motive in business
created bad financial methods, but I do know that, while
it would be wholly undesirable to try to overturn the
present financial system, it is wholly desirable to reshape
business on the basis of service. Then a better financial
system will have to come. The present system will drop
out because it will have no reason for being. The process
will have to' be a gradual one.

The start toward the stabilization of his own afifairs may
be made by any one. One cannot achieve perfect results

WHY NOT HAVE GOOD BUSINESS? 183

acting alone, but as the example begins to sink in there
will be followers, and thus in the course of time we can
hope to put inflated business and its fellow, depressed
business, into a class with small-pox — ^that is, into the class
of preventable diseases. It is perfectly possible, with the
reorganization of business and finance that is bound to
come about, to take the ill efFect of seasons, if not the
seasons, out of industry, and also the periodic depressions.
Farming is already in process of reorganization. When
industry and farming are fully reorganized they will be
complementary; they belong together, not apart. As an
indication, take our valve plant. We established it
eighteen miles out in the coimtry so that the workers could
also be farmers. By the use of machinery farming need
not consume more than a fraction of the time it now con-
sumes; the time nature requires to produce is much larger
than that required for the human contribution of seeding,
cultivating, and harvesting; in many industries where the
parts are not bulky it does not make much difference where
they are made. By the aid of water power they can well be
made out in farming country. Thus we can, to a much
larger degree than is commonly known, have farmer-in-
dustrialists who both farm and work under the most
scientific and healthful conditions. That arrangement will
care for some seasonal industries; others can arrange a
succession of products according to the seasons and the
equipment, and still others can, with more careful manag-
ment, iron out their seasons. A complete study of any
specific problem will show the way.

The periodic depressions are more serious because they
seem so vast as to be uncontrollable. Until the whole
reorganization is brought about, they cannot be wholly
controlled, but each man in business can easily do some-
thing for himself and while benefiting his own. QTigasoaa.-
tion in a veiy materiaJ way, also Help oftieia. T^^"^ai^

134 MY LIFE AND WORK

production has not reflected good times or bad times; it has
kept right on regardless of conditions excepting from 1917
to 1919, when the factory was turned over to war work,
l^e year 1913-1913 was supposed to be a dull one;
although now some call it "normal"; we all but doubled
our sales; 1913-1914 was dull; we increased our sales by
more than a third. Ilie year 1920-1921 is supposed to
have been one of the most depressed in history; we sold a
million and a quarter ears, or about five times as many as in
1913-1914 — tiie "normal year." lliere is no particular
secret in it. It is, as is everything else in our business,
the inevitable result of the appUcation of a principle whidi
can be applied to any business.

We now have a Tninimnm wage of six dollars a day paid
without reservation. The people are sufficiently used
to high wages to make supervision unnecessary. The
minimum wage is paid just as soon as a worker has quali*
fied in his production — which is a matter that depends
upon his own desire to work. We have put our estimate
of profits into the wage and are now paying higher wages
than during the boom times after the war. But we are»
as always, paying them on the basis of work. And that
the men do work is evidenced by the fact that although
mx dollars a day is the minimum wage, about 60 pef
cent, of the workers receive above the minimum. The
six dollars is not a flat but a minimimi wage.

0>nsider first the fundamentals of prosperity. Progress
is not made by pulling off a series of stunts. Each step
has to be regulated. A man cannot expect to progress
without thinking. Take prosperity. A truly prosperous
time is when the largest number of people are getting all
they can legitimately eat and wear, and are in every sense
of the word comfortable. It is the degree of the comfort
of the people at large — not the size of the manufacturer's
bank balance — that evidences prosperity. The fimction

WHY NOT HAVE GOOD BUSINESS? 135

of the manufacturer is to contribute to this comfort.
He is an instrument of society and he can serve society only
as he manages his enterprises so as to turn over to the
public an increasingly better product at an ever-decreas-
ing price, and at the same time to pay to all those who have
a hand in his business an ever-increasing wage, based
upon the w4rk they do. In this way and in this way alone
can a manufacturer or any one in busiaess justify his
existence.

We are not much concerned with the statistics and the
theories of the economists on the recurring cycles of
prosperity and depression. They call the periods when
prices are high "prosperous." A really prosperoiw period
is not to be judged on the prices that manufacturers are
quoting for articles.

We are not concerned with combinations of words.
If the prices of goods are above the incomes of the people,
then get the prices down to the incomes. Ordinarily,
business is conceived as starting with a manufacturing
process and ending with a consumer. If that consumer
does not want to buy what the manufacturer has to sell him
and has not the money to buy it, then the manufacturer
blames the consumer and says that business is bad, and
thus, hitching the cart before the horse, he goes on his
way lamenting. Isn't that nonsense?

Does the manufacturer exist for the consumer or does
tte consumer exist for the manufacturer? If the consumer
will not — says he cannot — buy what the manufacturer has
to offer, is that the fault of the manufacturer or the
consumer? Or is nobody at fault? If nobody is at fault
then the manufacturer must go out of business.

But what business ever started with the manufactxu^r
and ended with the consumer? Where does the money
to make the wheels go round come from? "E'covq. "Ocsa
consumer, of course. And success mTQaittAa(AMseNs.\i^sR^

130 MY LIFE AND WORK

solely upon an ability to serve that consumer to his liking.
He may be served by quality or he may be served by price.
He is best served by the highest quality at the lowest price,
and any man who can give to tiie consumer the highest
quality at the lowest price is bound to be a leader in
business, whatever the kind of an article he makes. There
is no getting away from this.

T^en why flounder around waiting for good business?
Get the costs down by better management. Get the
prices down to the buying power.

Cutting wages is the easiest and most slovenly way to
handle the situation, not to speak of its being an in]^^1lnftT^
way. It is, in effect, throwing upon labour the incompe-
tency of the managers of the business. If we only knew it,
every depression is a challenge to every manufacturer
to put more brains into his business — ^to overcome by
management what other people try to overcome by wage
reduction. To tamper with wages before aU else is
changed, is to evade the real issue. And if the real issue
is tackled first, no reduction of wages may be necessary.
That has been my experience. The immediate practical
point is that, in the process of adjustment, someone will
have to take a loss. And who can take a loss except those
who have something which they can afford to lose?
But the expression, "take a loss," is rather misleading.
Really no loss is taken at all. It is only a giving up of a
certain part of the past profits in order to gain more in the
future. I was talking not long since with a hardware
merchant in a small town. He said:

" I expect to take a loss of $10,000 on my stock. But of
course, you know, it isn't really like losing that much.
We hardware men have had pretty good times. Most
of my stock was bought at high prices, but I have already
sold several stocks and had the benefit of them. Besides,
the ten thousand dollars which. I say I will lose are not the

WHY NOT HAVE GOOD BUSINESS? 187

same kind of dollars that I. used to have. They are, in a
way, speculative dollars. They are not the good dollars
that bought 100 cents' worth. So, thouj^ my loss may
soimd big. it is not big. And at the same time I am
making it possible for the people in my town to go on
building their houses without being discouraged by the
size of the hardware item. "

He is a wise merchant. He would rather take lessl
profit and keep business moving than keep his stock at
hi^ prices and bar the progress of his community. A man
hke that is an asset to a town. He has a clear head.
He is better able to swing the adjustment through his
inventory than through cutting down the wages of his
delivery men — through cutting down their ability to buy.

He did not sit around holding on to his prices and waiting
for something to turn up. He realized what seems to have
been quite generally forgotten — that it is part of proprie-
torship every now and again to lose money. We had to
take our loss.

Our sales eventually fell o£F as all other sales fell off.
We had a large inventory and, taking the materials and
parts in that inventory at their cost price, we could not
turn out a car at a price lower than we were asking, but
that was a price whidi on the turn of business was higher
than people could or wanted to pay. We closed down
to get our bearings. We were faced with making a cut of
$17,000,000 in the inventory or taking a much larger loss
than that by not doing business. So there was no choice
at all.

That is always the choice that a man in business has.
He can take the direct loss on his books and go ahead and
do business or he can stop doing business and take the loss
of idleness. The loss of not doing business is commonly
a loss greater than the actual money involved, for during,
the period of idleness fear will conavmafi \mWa\\N^ esA,'"'&

188 ' MY LIFE AND WORK

the shutdown is long enough, there will be no energy left
over to start up with again.

There is no use waiting around for business to improve.
If a manufacturer wants to perform his function, he must
get his price down to what people will pay. There is
always, no matter what the condition, a price that people
can and will pay for a necessity, and always, if the will is
there, that price can be met.

It cannot be met by lowering quality or by short-
sighted economy, which results only in a dissatisfied work-
ing force. It cannot be met by fussing or buzzing around.
It can be met only by increasing the efficiency of produc-
tion and, viewed in this fashion, each business depression,
so-called, ought to be regarded as a challenge to the brains
of the business commimity. Concentrating on prices
instead of on service is a siu* indication of the kind of
business man who can give no justification for his existence
as a proprietor.

This is only another way of saying that sales should be
made on the natural basis of real value, which is the cost
of transmuting human energy into articles of trade and
commerce. But that simple formula is not considered
business-Uke. It is not complex enough. We have
"business" whicii takes the most honest of all human
activities and makes them subject to the speculative
shrewdness of men who can produce false shortages of food
and other commodities, and thus excite in sodety anxi-
ety of demand. We have false stimulation and then false
numbness.

Economic justice is being constantly and quite often
innocently violated. You may say that it is the economic
condition which makes mankind what it is; or you may say
that it is mankind that makes the economic condition what
it is. You will find many claiming that it is the economic
system which malces men what they are. _ They blame

WHY NOT HAVE GOOD BUSINESS ? 18»

OUT industrial system for all the faults which we be-
hold in mankind generally. And you will find other
men who say that man creates his own conditions; that
if the economic, industrial, or social system ia bad, it
is but a reflection of what man himself is. What is wrong
in our industrial system is a reflection of what is wrong in
man himself. Manufacturers hesitate to admit that the
mistakes of the present industrial methods are, in part at
least, their own mistakes, systematized and extended.
But take the question outside of a man's immediate
concerns, and he sees the point readUy enough.

No doubt, with a less faulty human nature a less faulty
social system would have grown up. Or, if human nature
were worse than it is, a worse system would have grown up
— though probably a worse system would not have lasted
as long as the present one has. But few will claim that
mankind dehberately set out to create a faulty social
system. Granting without reserve that all faults of the
social system are in man himself, it does not follow that
he d^berately organized his imperfections and established
them. We shall have to charge a great deal up to igno-
rance. We shall have to charge a great deal up to in-
nocence.

Take the be^nnings of our present industrial system.
There was no indication of how it would grow. Every
new advance was hailed with joy. No one ever thought
of "capital" and "labour" as hostile interests. No one
ever dreamed that the very fact of success would bring
insidious dangers with it. And yet with growth every
imperfection latent in the system came out. A man's
business grew to such proportions that he had tQ have
more helpers than he knew by their first names; but that
fact was not regretted; it was rather hailed with joy. And
yet it has since led to an impersonal system wherein,
the workman has become sometluiig Yeas ^iwjQ. ^ 'gfctwsa.

140 MY LIFE AND WORK

— a mere part of the system. No one believes, of
course, that this dehumanizing process was deliberately
invented. It just grew. It was latent in the whole early
system, but no one saw it and no one could foresee it. Only
prodigious and unheard-of development could bring it to
Kght.

Take the industrial idea; what is it? The true in-
dustrial idea is not to make money. The industrial idea
is to express a serviceable idea, to dupUcate a useful idea,
by as many thousands as there are people who need it.

To produce, produce; to get a system that wUl reduce
production to a fine art; to put production on such a basis
as will provide means for expansion and the building of
still more shops, the production of still more thousands
of useful things — that is the real industrial idea. The
negation of the industrial idea is the eflFort to make a profit
out of speculation instead of out of work. There are
short-sighted men who cannot see that business is bigger
than any one man's interests. Business is a process of give
and take, Uve and let live. It is cooperation among
many forces and interests. Whenever you find a man who
believes that business is a river whose beneficial flow ought
to stop as soon as it reaches him you find a man who
thinks he can keep business alive by stopping its cir-
culation. He would produce wealth by this stopping of
the production of wealth.

The principles of service cannot fail to cure bad business.
Which leads us into the practical application of the prin-
ciples of service and finance.

CHAPTER X
How Cheaply Can Things Be Made?

NO ONE will deny that if prices are sufficiently low,
buyers will always be found, no matter what are
supposed to be the business conditions. That is
one of the elemental facts of business. Sometimes raw
materials will not move, no matter how low the price.
We have seen something of that during the last year, but
that is because the manufacturers and the distributors were
trying to dispose of high-cost stocks before making new
engagements. The markets were stagnant, but not "satu-
rated" with goods. Whatiscalleda "saturated" market
is only one in which the prices are above the purchasing
power.

Unduly high prices are always a sign of unsound bu^ess,
because they are always due to some abnormal condition.
A healthy patient has a normal temperature; a healthy
market has normal prices. High prices come about com-
monly by reason of speculation following the report of a
shortage. Although there is never a shortage in everything,
a shortage in just a few important commodities, or even in
one, serves to start speculation. Or again, goods may not
be short at all. An inflation of currency or credit will cause
a quick bulge in apparent buying power and the consequent
opportunity to speculate. There may be a combination
of actual shortages and a currency inflation — as frequently
happens during war. But in any condition of imduly
high prices, no matter what the real cause, the people pay
the high prices because they think there is going to be a
shortage. They may buy bread ahead oi V)assn ccNYi.\iRR:^,

142 MY LIFE AND WORK

so as not to be left later in the lurch, or they may buy in the
hope of reselling at a profit. When there was talk of a sugar
shortage, housewives who had never in their hves bought
more than ten pounds of sugar at once tried to get stocks
of one hundred or two hundred pounds, and while they
were doing this, speculators were buying sugar to store in
warehouses. Nearly all our war shortages were caused by
speculation or buying ahead of need.

No matter how short the supply of an article is supposed
to be, no matter if the Government takes control and
seizes every ounce of that article, a man who is willing
to pay the money can always get whatever supply he is
wilUng to pay for. No one ever knows actually how great
or how small is the national stock of any commodity. The
very best figures are not more than guesses; estimates of the
world's stock of a commodity are still wilder. We may
think we know how much of a commodity is produced on a
certain day or in a certain month, but that does not tell us
how much will be produced the next day or the next month.
Likewise we do not know how much is consumed. By
spending a great deal of money we might, in the course
of time, get at fairly accurate figures on how much of a
particular commodity was eonsimied over a period, but
by the time those figures were compiled they would be
utterly useless except for historical purposes, because in
the next period the consumption might be double or half
as much. People do not stay put. That is the trouble
with aU the framers of Socialistic and Communistic,
and of all other plans for the ideal regulation of society.
They all presume that people will stay put. The re-
actionary has the same idea. He insists that everyone
ought to stay put. Nobody does, and for that I am
thankful.

Consumption varies according to the price and the
quality, and nobody knows or can figure out what future

HOW CHEAPLY MADE? 143

consumption will amount to, because eveiy time a price
is lowered a new stratimi of buying power is reached.
Everyone knows that, but many refuse to recognize it by
their acts. When a storekeeper buys goods at a wrong
price and finds they will not move, he reduces the price
by degrees until they do move. If he is wise, instead
of nibbling at the price and encouraging in his customers
the hope of even lower prices, he takes a great big bite out
of the price and gets the stuff out of his place. Everyone
takes a loss on some proposition of sales. The common hope
is that after the loss there may be a big profit to make up
for the loss. That is usually a delusion. The profit
out of whidi the loss has to be taken must be foimd in the
business preceding the cut. Any one who was foolish
enou^ to regard the high profits of the boom period as
permanent profits got into financial trouble when the drop
came. However, there is a belief, and a veiy strong one,
that business consists of a series of profits and losses, and
good business is one in which the profits exceed the losses.
Therefore some men reason that the best price to sell at is
the highest price which may be had. That is supposed
to be good business practice. Is it? We have not found
it so.

We have found in biiying materials that it is not worth
while to buy for other than immediate needs. We buy
only enough to fit into the plan of production, taking into
consideration the state of transportation at the time. If
transportation were perfect and an even flow of materials
could be assured, it would not be necessary to carry any
stock whatsoever. The carloads of raw materials would
arrive on schedule and in the planned order and amounts,
and go from the railway cars into production. That would
save a great deal of money, for it would give a very rapid
turnover and thus decrease the amoimt of money tied vu$
in materials. With bad transportation, oiae \iaa \a carc^

144 MY LIFE AND WORK

larger stocks. At the time of revaluing the inTentory in
1921 the stock was unduly high because transportation
had been so bad. But we learned long ago never to buy
ahead for speculative purposes. When prices are going up
it is considered good business to buy far ahead, and when
prices are up to buy as little as possible. It needs no argu-
ment to demonstrate that, if you buy materials at ten cents
a potmd and the material goes later to twenty cents a poimd
you will have a distinct advantage over the man who is
compelled to buy at twenty cents. But we have found that
thus buying ahead does not pay. It is entering into a
guessing contest. It is not business. If a man buys a
large stock at ten cents, he is in a fine position as long as the
other man is paying twenty cents. Then he later gets a
chance to buy more of the material at twenty cents, and
it seems to be a good buy because everything points
to the price going to thirty cents. Having great
satisfaction in his previous judgment, on which he made
'money, he of course makes the new purchase. Then the
price drops and he is just where he started. We have
carefully figured, over the years, that buying ahead of
requirements does not pay — that the gains on one pur-
diase will be offset by the losses on another, and in the
end we have gone to a great deal of trouble without any
corresponding benefit. Therefore in our buying we simply
get the best price we can for the quantity that we require.
We do not buy less if the price be high and we do not buy
more if the price be low. We carefully avoid bargain
lots in excess of requirements. It was not easy to reach
that decision. But in the end speculation will kill any
manufacturer. Give him a couple of good purchases
on which he makes money and before long he will be
thinking more about making money out of buying and
selling than out of his legitimate business, and he will
smash. The only way to keep out of trouble is to buy

HOW CHEAPLY MADE! 145

what one needs — ^no more and no less. That course re-
moves one hazard from business.

This buying experience is given at length because it ex-
plains our selling policy. Instead of giving attention to
competitors or to demand, our prices are based on an esti-
mate of what the largest possible number of people will
want to pay, or can pay, for what we have to sell. And
what has resulted from that policy is best evidenced by
comparing the price of the touring car and the production.

TEAB FBICB FBODUCnON

lOOd-IO $950 18,664 can

1910-11 $780 94,628 "

1911-12 <690 78.440 "

1918-13 <600 168,220 "

191S-14 tSBO 248,307 "

1914r~15 9490 808,213 "

1915-10 9440 538.021 "

1910-17 9800 785.432 "

1917-18 9450 706.584 "

1918-19 ^^ 583,706 "
(The above two years were war years and the factoty was in war
work).

1919^0 $575 to $440 996,660 "

1920-21 $440 to $355 1,250,000 "

The high prices of 1921 were, considering the financial
inflation, not really high. At the time of writing the
price is $497. These prices are actually lower than they
appear to be, because improvements in quality are
being steadily made. We study eveiy car in order to
discover jf it has features that might be developed and
adapted. If any one has anything better than we have
we want to know it, and for that reason we buy one of every
new ear that comes out. Usually the car is used fot «.
while, put through a road test, taken a"pa"rt., a-TA^Nxi.^^^

146 MY LIFK AND WORK

as to how and of what everything is made. Scattered
about Dearborn there is probably one of nearly every
make of car on earth. Every little while when we buy a
new car it gets into the newspapers and somebody re-
marks that Ford doesn't use the Ford. Last year we or-
dered a big Lanchester — ^which is supposed to be the best
car in England. It lay in our Long Island factory for
several months and then I decided to drive it to Detroit.
There were several of us and we had a little caravan — the
Lanchester, a Packard, and a Ford or two. I happened
to be riding in the Landiester passing through a New
York town and when the reporters came up they wanted
to know right away why I was not riding in a Ford.

"Well, you see, it is this way," I answered. "I am on
a vacation now; I am in no hiury, we do not care mucji
when we get home. That is the reason I am not in the
Ford."

You know, we also have a line of "Ford stories"!

Our pohcy is to reduce tie price, extend the operations,
and improve the article. You will notice that the re-
duction of price comes first. We have never considered
any costs as fixed. Therefore we first reduce the price
to a point where we beUeve more sales will result. Then we
go ahead and try to make the price. We do not bother
about the costs. The new price forces the costs down.
The more usual way is to take the costs and then
determine the price, and although that method may be
scientific in the narrow sense, it is not scientific in the
broad sense, because what earthly use is it to know the cost
if it tells you you cannot manufacture at a price at whidi
the article can be sold? But more to the point is the fact
that, although one may calculate what a cost is, and of
coiu'se all of our costs are carefully calculated, no one
knows what a cost ou^t to be. One of the ways of dis-
coveiing what a cost oi^ht to be is to name a price so

HOW CHEAPLY MADE? 147

low as to force everybody in the place to the highest point
of eflEciency. The low price makes everybody dig for \
profits. We make more discoveries concerning manu- 1 >
facturing and selling under this forced method than by
any method of leisiu«ly investigation.

The payment of high wages fortunately contributes to
the low costs because the men become steadily more
efficient on account of being reUeved of outside worries.
The payment of five dollars a day for an eight-hour day
was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made, and
the six-dollar day wage is cheaper than the five. How far
this will go, we do not know.

We have always made a profit at the prices we have fixed
and, just as we have no idea how high wa^s will go, we
also have no idea how low prices will go, but there is no par-
ticular use in bothering on that point. The tractor, for
instance, was first sold for $750, then at $850, then at
$625, and the other day we cut it 37 per cent, to $395.

The tractor is not made in connection with the auto-
mobiles. No plant is large enough to make two articles.
A shop has to be devoted to exactly one product in order
to get the real economies.

For most purposes a man with a machine is better than
a man without a machine. By the ordering of design of
product and of manufacturing process we aro able to
provide that kind of a machine which most multiplies the
power of the hand, and therefore we give to that man a
larger role of service, which means that he is entitled to a
larger share of comfort.

Keeping that principle in mind we can attack waste with
a definite objective. Wewill not put into our estabUshment
anything that is useless. We will not put up elaborate
buildings as monuments to our success. The interest on
the investment and the cost of their upkeep only serve
to add uselessly to the cost of what is pToAttceA. — s» SV^afc

148 MY LIFE AND WORK

monuments of success are apt to end as tombs. A great
administration building may be necessary. In me it
arouses a suspicion that perhaps there is too much ad-
ministration. We have never found a need for elaborate
administration and would prefer to be advertised by our
product than by where we make our product.

The standardization that effects large economies for
the consumer results in profits of such gross magnitude to
the producer that he can scarcely know what to do with
his money. But his effort must be sincere, painstaking,
and fearless. Cutting out a half-a-dozen models is not
standardi^g. It may be, and usually is, only the limit-
ing of business, for if one is selling on the ordinary basis
of profit — that is, on the basis of taking as much money
'away from the consimier as he will give up — llien surely
the consumer ought to have a wide range of choice.
' Standardization, then, is the final stage of the process.
[We start with consumer, work back through the design,
'and finally arrive at manufacturing. The manufactur-
ing becomes a means to the end of service.

It is important to bear this order in mind. As yet, the
order is not thorou^ly understood. The price relation
is not understood. The notion persists that prices ought
to be kept up. On the contrary, good business — large
consxmiption— depends on their going down.

And here is another point. The service must be the
best you can give. It is considered good manufactur-
ing practice, and not bad ethics, occasionally to change
designs so that old models will become obsolete and new
ones will have to be bought either because repair parts for
the old cannot be had, or because the new model offers a
new sales argument which can be used to persuade a
consumer to scrap what he has and buy something new.
We have been told that this is good business, that it is clever
business, that the object of bimness ought to be to get

HOW CHEAPLY MADE? 149

people to buy frequently and that it is bad business to try
to make anything that will last forever, because when once
a man is sold he will not buy again.

Our principle of business is precisely to the contrary.
We cannot conceive how to serve the consumer unless we
make for him something that, as far as we can provide,
will last forever. We want to construct some kind of a
machine that will last forever. It does not please us to
have a buyer's car wear out or become obsolete. We want
the man who buys one of our products never to have
to buy another. We never make an improvement that
renders any previous model obsolete. The parts of a
specific model are not only interdiangeable with all other
cars of ihat model, but they are interchangeable with
similar parts on all the cars that we have turned out.
You can take a car of ten years ago and, buying to-day's
parts, make it with very little expense into a car of to-day.
Having these objectives the costs always come down under
pressure. And since we have the firm policy of steady
price reduction, there is always pressure. Sometimes
it is just harder!

Take a few more instances of saving. The sweepings net
six hundred thousand dollars a year. Experiments are
constantly going on in the utilization of scrap. In one
of the stamping operations six-inch circles of sheet metal
are cut out. These formerly went into scrap. The waste
worried the men. They worked to find uses for the discs.
They found that the plates were just the right size and
shape to stamp into radiator caps but the metal was not
thick enough. They tried a double thickness of plates,
with the result that they made a cap whidi tests proved to
be stronger than one made out of a single sheet of metal.
We get 150,000 of those discs a day. We have now found
a use for about 20,000 a day and expect to find fiirtbfct
uses for the remainder. We saved &^yi\i\. Xeo. isJ^aisa ts^

150 MY LIFE AND WORK

by making transmissions instead of buying them. We
ejtperimented with bolts and produced a special bolt made
on what Is called an "upsetting machine" with a rolled
thread that was stronger than any bolt we could buy,
although in its making was used only about one third of
the material that the outside manufacturers used. The
saving on one style of bolt alone amounted to half a
miUion dollars a year. We used to assemble our cars at
Detroit, and although by special packing we managed to
get five or six into a freight car, we needed many hundreds
of freight cars a day. Trains were moving ia and out all
the time. Once a thousand freight cars were packed in a
single day. A certain amount of congestion was inevitable.
It is very expensive to knock down marines and crate
them so that they cannot be injured in transit — to say
nothing of the transportation charges. Now, we assemble
only three or four hundred cars a day at Detroit — just
enough for local needs. We now ship the parts to our
assembling stations all over the United States and in
fact pretty much all over the world, and the machines are
put together there. Wherever it is possible for a branch
to naake a part more cheaply than we can make it in
Detroit and ship it to them, then the branch makes the
part.

The plant at Mandiester, England, is making nearly
an entire car. The tractor plant at Cork, Ireland, is
making almost a complete tractor. This is an enormous
saving of expense and is only an indication of what may be
done throughout industry generally, when each part of a
composite article is made at the exact point where it may
be made most economically. We are constantly e^>eri-
menting with every material that enters into the car.
We cut most of our own lumber from our own forests.
We are e^wrimenting in the manufacture of artificial
'— *^er because we use about forty thousand yards of

HOW CHEAPLY MADE? 151

artificial leather a day. A penny here and a penny tliere
runs into large amounts in the course of a year.

The greatest development of all, however, is the lUver
Rouge plant, whidi, when it is running to its full capadty,
will cut deeply and in many directions into the price of
everything we make. "Rie whole tractor plant is now
there. This plant is located on the river on the outskirts
of Detroit and the property covers six himdred and sixty-
five acres — enough for future development. It has a large
slip and a turning basin capable of accommodating any
lake steamship; a short-cut canal and some dredging will
give a direct lake connection by way of the Detroit River.
"We use a great deal of coal. This coal comes directly from
our mines over the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Rail-
way, which we control, to the Highland Park plant and
the River Rouge plant. Part of it goes for steam pur-
poses. Another part goes to the by-product coke ovens
which we have established at the River Rouge plant.
Coke moves on from the ovens by medianical trans-
mission to the blast furnaces. The low volatile gases from
the blast furnaces are piped to the power plant boilers
where they are joined by the sawdust and the shavings
from the body plant — the making of all our bodies has
been shifted to this plant — and in addition the coke
*'breeze" (the dust in the making of coke) is now also
being utihzed for stoking. The steam power plant is thus
fired almost exclusively from what would otherwise be
waste products. Immense steam turbines directly coupled
with dynamos transform this power into electricity, and all
of the machinery in the tractor and the body plants is run
by individual motors from this electricity. In the course
of time it is expected that there will be sufficient electricity
to run practically the whole Hi^and Park plant, and we
shall then have cut out our coal bill.
" Among the by-products of the coke oveoa \a ^ iB*&*

152 MY LIFE AND WORK

It is piped both to the Rouge and Highland Park plants
where it is used for heat-treat pxirposes, for the enamelling
ovens, for the car ovens, and the hke. We formerly had
to buy this gas. The ammonium sulphate is used for
fertilizer. The benzol is a motor fuel. The small sizes
of coke> not suitable for the blast fumaces> are sold to the
employees — delivered free into their homes at much less
than the ordinary market price. The large-sized coke
goes to tJie blast furnaces. There is no manual handUng.
We run the melted iron directly from the blast furnaces
into great ladles. These ladles travel into the shops and
the iron is poured directly into the moulds without another
heating. We thus not only get a uniform quality of iron
according to our own specifications and directly under
our control, but we save a melting of pig iron and in fact
cut out a whole process in manufacturing as well as mak-
ing available all our own scrap.

What all this will amount to in point of savings we do
not know — that is, we do not know how great will be the
saving, because the plant has not been running long
enough to give more than an indication of what is ahead,
and we save in so many directions — ^in transportation, in
the generation of our power, in the generation of gas, in
the e^wnse in casting, and then over and above that is
the revenue from the by-products and from the smaller
azes of coke. Hie investment to accomplish these ob-
jects to date amounts to something over forty million
dollars.

How far we shall thus reach back to sources depends
entirely on circumstances. Nobody anywhere can really
do more than guess about the future costs of produc-
tion. It is wiser to recognize that the future holds more
than the past — that every day holds within it an improve-
ment on the methods of the day before.

But how about production? If every necessary of life

HOW CHEAPLY MADE? 153

were produced so cheaply and in such quantities, would
not the world shortly be surfeited with goods? Will there
not come a point when, regardless of price, people simply
will not want anything more than what they already have?
And if in the process of manufacturing fewer and fewer
men are used, what is gping to become of these men — ^how
are they going to find jobs and live?

Take the second point first. We mentioned many ma-
chines and many methods that displaced great numbers
of men and then someone asks :

"Yes, that is a very fine idea from the standpoint of the
proprietor, but how about these poor fellows whose jobs
are taken away from them?"

The question is entirely reasonable, but it is a little
curious that it should be asked. For when were men ever
really put out of work by the bettering of industrial
processes? The stage-coach drivers lost their jobs with
the coming of the railways. Should we have prohibited
the railways and kept the stage-coach drivers? Were
there more men worldng with the stage-coaches than are
working on the railways? Should we have prevented the
taxicab because its coming took the bread out of the
mouths of the horse-cab dri vera ? How does the number of
taxicabs compare with the number of horse-cabs when the
latter were in their prime ? The coming 6i shoe machinery
closed most of the shops of those who made shoes by hand.
When shoes were made by hand, only the very well-to-do
could own more than a single pair of shoes, and most
working people went barefooted fin summer. Now,
hardly any one has only one pair of shoes, and shoe making
is a great industry. No, every time you can so arrange
that one man will do the work of two, you so add to the
wealth of the country that there will be a new and better
job for the man who is displaced. If whole industriea,
changed overnight, then disposing ol VXie SMX^^3s tossv

154 MY LIFE AND WORK

would be a problem, but tliese changes do not occur as
rapidly as that. They come gradually. In our own ex-
perience a new place always opens for a man as soon as
better processes have taken his old job. And what hap*
pens in my shops happens everywhere in industry.
There are many times more men to-day employed in the
steel industries than there were in the days when every
operation was by hand. It has to be so. It always is so
and always will be so. And if any man cannot see it» it

; is because he will not look beyond his own nose.

' Now as to saturation. We are continually asked:
"When will you get to the point of overproduction?
When will there be more cars than people to use themp"
We believe it is possible some day to reach the point
where all goods are produced so cheaply and in such quan-
tities that overproduction will be a reahty. But as far as
we are concerned, we do not look forward to that con-
dition with fear — we look forward to it with great satis-
faction. Nothing could be more splendid than a world in
which everybody has all that he wants.^ Our fear is that

'this condition will be too long postponed. As to our own
products, that condition is very far away. We do not
know how many motor cars a family will desire to use of the
particular kind that we make. We know that, as the price
has come down, the farmer, who at first used one car (and
it must be remembered that it is not so very long ago that
the farm market for motor cars was absolutely xmknown —
the limit of sales was at that time fixed by all the wise
statistical sharps at somewhere near the number of mil-
Uonaires in the country) now often uses two, and also he
buys a truck. Perhaps, instead of sending workmen out
to scattered jobs in a single car, it will be cheaper to send
each worker out in a car of his own. That is happening

' with salesmen. The public finds its own consumptive

■'**^8 with unerring accuracy, and since we no longer make

HOW CHEAPLY MADE? 155

motor cars or tractors, but merely the parts which when
assembled become motor cars and tractors, the facilities
as now provided would hardly be sufficient to provide re-
placements for ten million cars. And it would be quite
the same with any business. We do not have to bother
about overproduction for some years to come, provided
the prices are right. It Is the refusal of people to buy
on account of price that really stimulates real business.
Then if we want to do business we have to get the prices
down without hurting the quahty. Thus price reduction
forces us to learn improved and less wasteful methods of
production. One big part of the discovery of what is
^'normal" in industry depends on managerial genius dis-
covering better ways of doing things. If a man reduces
his selling price to a point where he is making no profit or
incurring a loss, then he simply is forced to discover how
to make as good an article by a better method — ^making
his new method produce the profit, and not producing a
profit out of reduced wages or increased prices to the
public.

It is not good management to take profits out of theV
workers or the buyers; make management produce the
profits. Don't cheapen the product; don't cheapen the
wage; don't overcharge the public. Put brains into the
method, aild more brains, and still more brains — do t hi ngs
better than ever before; and by this means all parties to
business are served and benefited.

And all of this can always be done.

V' -jf'

nr"^' ''^' CHAPTEE XI

(0 i i Monet and Goods

\ yf I^HE primary object of a manufacturing business is
1 I to produce, and if that objective is always kept,
Lj*" finance becomes a wholly secondary matter that
has largely to do with bookkeeping. My own financial

1^,. operations have been veiy simple. I started with the

^ policy of buying and selling for cash, keeping a large fund
of cash always on hand, taking full advantage of all dis-
counts, and collecting interest on bank balances. I regard

-• ' a bank principally as aplace in which it is safe and con-!

petitor's business we lose on our own. The minutes we
spend in becoming expert in finance we lose in production.
The place to finance a manufacturing business is the shop,
and not the bank. I would not say that a man in business
needs to know nothing at all about finance, but he is better
o£E knowing too little than too much, for if he becomes too
expert he will get into the way of thinking that he can
borrow money instead of earning it and then he will bor-
row more money to pay back what he has borrowed, and
instead of being a business man he will be a note juggler,
trying to keep in the air a regular flock of bonds and notes.
If he is a really expert juggler, he may keep going quite
a long time in this fashion, but some day he is bound to
make a miss and the whole collection wiU come tumbling
down around him. Manufacturing is not to be confused
with banking, and I think that there is a tendency for too
many business men to mix up in banking and for too many
rera to mix up in business. The tendency is to dis-

MONEY AND GOODS 157

tort the true purposes of both business and banking and
that hurts both of them. The money has to come out of
the shop, not out of the bank, and I have foxmd that the
shop will answer every possible requirement, and in one
case, when it was believed that the company was rather
seriously in need of funds, the shop when called on raised a
larger sum than any bank in this coimtry could loan.

We have been thrown into finance mostly in the way of
denial. Some years back we had to keep standing a denial
that the Ford Motor Company was owned by the Stand-
ard Oil Company and with that denial, for convenience's
sake, we coupled a denial that we were connected with any
other concern or that we intended to sell cars by mail.
Last year the best-Uked rumour was that we were down in
Wall Street hunting for money. I did not bother to deny
that. It takes too much time to deny everything. In-
stead, we demonstrated that we did not need any money.
Since then I have heard nothing more about being financed
bv,WaU Street.

\We are not against borrowing money and we are not
against bankers. We are against trying to make borrowed
money take the place of work. We are against the kind of , ^
banker who regards a business as a melon to be cut. The "^
thing is to keep money and borrowing and finance gener-
ally in their proper place, and in order to do that one has to
consider exactly for,what the money is needed and how it is
going to be paid off^

Money is only a tool in business. It is just a part of
the machinery. You might as well borrow 100,000 lathes
as $100,000 if the trouble is inside your business. More
lathes will not cure it; neither will more money. Only
heavier doses of braias and thought and wise courage can
cure. A business that misuses what it has will continue
to misuse what it can get. The point is — cure the i»i«asR;,
When that is dope, the business wiXl \je©». \o xasiJisa'ifts ^s^ni*

158 MY LIFE AND WORK

money, just as a repaired human body begins to make
sufficient pure blood.

Borrowing may easily become an excuse for not boring
into the trouble. Borrowing may easily become a sop for
laziness and pride. Some business men are too lazy to get
into overalls and go down to see what is the matter. Or
they are too proud to permit the thought that anything
they have originated could go wrong. But the laws of
business are like the law of gravity, and the man who
opposes them feels their power.

Borrowing for expansion is one thing; borrowing to
make up for mismanagement and waste is quite anoUier.
You do not want money for the latter — ^for the reason that
money cannot do the job. Waste is corrected by econ-
omy; mismanagement is corrected by brains, ^either of
these correctives has anything to do with money. Indeed,
money under certain circimistances is their enemy. And
many a business man thanks his stars for the pinch which
showed him that his best capital was in his own brains and
not in bank loans. Borrowing under certain circinn-
stances is just like a drunkard taking another drink to cure
the effect of the last one. It does not do what it is ex-
pected to do. It simply increases the difficulty. Tight-
ening up the loose places in a business is much more prof-
itable than any amount of new capital at 7 per cent.

The internal ailments of business are the ones that re-
quire most attention. "Business" in the sense of trading
with the people is largely a matter of filling the wants of
the people. If you make what they need, and sell it at a
price which makes possession a help and not a hardship,
then you will do business as long as there is business to do.
People buy what helps them just as natiu*ally as they
drink water.

But the process of making the article will require con-
^ant care. Machinery wears out and needs to be re*

MONEY AND GOODS 169

stored. Men grow uppish, lazy, or careless. A business
is men and machines united in the production of a com-
modity, and both the man and the machines need repairs
and replacements. Sometimes it is the men "higher up"
who most need revamping — and they themselves are al'
ways the last to recognize it. When a business becomes
congested with bad methods; when a business becomes ill
through lack of attention to one or more of its functions;
when executives sit comfortably back in their chairs as if
the plans they inaugurated are going to keep them going
forever; when business becomes a mere plantation on
which to Hve, and not a big work whidi one has to
do — ^then you may expect trouble. You will w^e up
some fine morning and find yourself doing more business
than you have ever done before — and getting less out of it.
You find yourself short of money. You can borrow
money. And you can do it, oh, so easily. People will
crowd money on you. It is the most subtle temptation
the young business man has. But if you do borrow money
you are simply giving a stimulant to whatever may be
wrong. You feed the disease. Is a man more wise with
borrowed money than he is with his own? Not as a usual
thing. To borrow under such conditions is to mortgage
a declining property.

Tlie time for a business man to borrow money, if ever,
is when he does not need it. Tliat is, when he does not
need it as a substitute for the things he ought himself to
do. If a man's business is in excellent condition and in
need of expansion, it is comparatively safe to borrow.
But if a business is in need of money through mismanage-
ment, then the thing to do is to get intothe business and
correct the trouble from the inside — ^not poultice it with
loans from the outside.

My financial jrolicy is the result of my sales ^^"tj . "V
hold that it is better to sell a large ttoicjjet o1 a;!^\'(^e.?> ^ *

160 MY LIFE AKD WORK

small profit than to sell a few at a large profit. This en-
ables a larger number of people to buy and it gives a larger
number of men employment at good wages. It permits
the planning of production, the elimination of dull seasons,
and the waste of carrying an idle plant. Thus results a
suitable, continuous business, and if you will think it over,
you will discover that most so-called iirgent financing is
made necessary because of a lack of planned, continuous
business. Reducing prices is taken by the short-sifted
to be the same as reducing the income of a business. It is
very difficult to deal with that sort of a mind because it is
so totally lacking in even the background knowledge of
what business is. For instance, I was once asked, when
contemplating a reduction of eighty dollars a car, whether
on a production of five hundred thousand cars this would
not reduce the income of the company by forty million
dollars. Of course if one sold only five hundred thousand
cars at the new price, the income would be reduced forty
million dollars — which is an interesting mathematical
calculation that has nothing whatsoever to do with busi-
ness, because unless you reduce the price of an article the
sales do not continuously increase and therefore the busi-
ness has no stability.

If a business is not increasing, it is bound to be decreas-
ing, and a decreasing business always needs a lot of financ-
ing. Old-time business went on the doctrine that prices
should always be kept up to the highest point at which
people will buy. Really modem business has to take the
opposite view.

Bankers and lawyers can rarely appreciate this fact.
They confuse inertia with stability. It is perfectly be-
yond their comprehension that the price should ever vol-
xmtarily be reduced. That is why putting the usual type
of banker or lawyer into the management of a business is
courting disaster. Reduraug prices increases the volume

MONEY AND GOODS 161

and disposes of finance, provided one regards the inevi-
table profit as a trust fund with which to conduct more and
better business. Our profit, because of the rapidity of the
turnover in the business and the great volume of sales,
has, no matter what tJie price at which the product was
sold, always been large. We have had a small profit per
article but a large aggregate profit. The profit is not con-
stant. After cutting the prices, the profits for a time run
low, but then the inevitable economies begin to get in their
work and the profits go high again. But they are not dis-
tributed as dividends. I have always insisted on the pay-
ment of small dividends and the company has to-day
no stockholders who wanted a different pohcy. I regard
business profits above a small percentage as belonging
more to the business than to the stockholders.

The stockholders, to my way of thinking, ought to be
only those who are active in the business and who will
regard the company as an instrument of service rather
than as a machine for making money. If large profits are
made — and working to serve forces them to be large —
then they should be in part turned back into the business
so that it may be stiU better fitted to serve, and in part
passed on to the purchaser. During one year our profits
were so much larger than we expected them to be that we
voluntarily retiuned fifty dollars to each purchaser of a
ear. We felt that unwittingly we had overcharged the
purchaser by that much. My price polity and hence my
financial policy came up in a suit brought against the com-
pany several years ago to compel the payment of larger
dividends. On the witness stand I gave the policy then
in force and jvhich is still in force. It is this:

In the first place, I hold that it Is better to sell a large number of
cars at a reasonably small margin than to seU fewer cars at a large
mar^ of profit.

I hold this because it enables a large nvimbet ol -pea^t \ft\s>sg 'os^

162 MY LIFE AND WORK

enjoy the use of a car and because it gives a larger number of men
employment at good wages. Those are aims I have in life. But
I would not be counted a success; I would be, in fact, a flat failure
if I could not accomplish that and at the same time make a fair
amotmt of profit for myself and the men associated with me in business.

Thb policy I hold is good business policy because it works — be-
cause with each succeeding year we have been able to put our car
within the reach of greater and greater numbers, give employment
to more and more men, imd, at the same time, through the volume of
business, increase our own profits b^ond anything we had hoped for
or even dreamed of when we started.

Bear in mind, every time you reduce the price of the car without
reducing the quality, you increase the possible number of purchasers.
There are many men who will pay $360 for a car who would not
pay $440. We had in round numbers 500,000 buyers of cars on the
$440 basis, and I figure that on the $360 basis we can increase the
sales to possibly 800,000 cars for the year — less profit on each car,
but more cars, more employment of labour, and in the end we shall
get all the total profit we ought to make.

And let me say right here, that I do not believe that we should
> make such an awful profit on our cars. A reasonable profit is right,
but not too much. So it has been my policy to force the price of the
car down as fast as production would permit, and give Uie benefits
to users and labourers — with resulting surprisingly enormous benefits
to ourselves.

This poKcy does not agree with the general opinion that
a business is to be managed to the end that the stock-
holders can take out the largest possible amount of cash.
Therefore I do not want stockholders in the ordinary sense
of the term — they do not help forward the ability to serve.
My ambition is to employ more and more men and to
spread, in so far as I am able, the benefits of the industrial
system that we are working to foxmd; we want to help
build lives and homes. This requires that the largest
share of the profits be put back into productive enter-
prise. Hence we have no place for the non-working
stockholders. The working stockholder is more andous
to increase his opportunity to serve than to bank dividends.

I£ it at any time became a qjiestion between lowering

MONET AND GOODS 168

wages or abolidung dividends, I would abolish dividends.
That time is not apt to come, for, as I have pointed out,
there is no economy in low wages. It is bad financial
policy to reduce wages because it also reduces buying
power. If one believes that leadership brings respona-
bihty, then a part of that responsibihty is in seeing that
those whom one leads shall have an adeqtiate opportunity
to earn a Uving. Finance concerns not merely the profit or
solvency of a company; it also comprehends the amount
of money that the company turns back to the community
through wages. There is no charity in this. There is
no charity in proper wages. It is simply that no company
can be said to be stable which is not so well managed that
it can affk rd a man an opportunity to do a great deal of
work and therefore to earn a good wage.

There is something sacred about wages — they represent
homes and families and domestic destinies. People ought
to tread very carefully when approaching wages. On the
cost sheet, wages are mere figures; out in the world, wages
are bread boxes and coal bins, babies' cradles and chil-
dren's education — ^family comforts and contentment. On
the other hand, there is something just as sacred about
capital which is used to provide the means by which work
can be made productive. Nobody is helped if our indus-
tries are sucked dry of their Kfe-blood. There is some-
thing just as sacred about a shop that employs thousands
of men as there is about a home. The shop is the main-
stay of all the finer things which the home represents. If
we want the home to be happy, we must contrive to keep
the shop busy. The whole justification of the profits
made by the shop is that they are used to make doubly
secure the homes dependent on that shop, and to create
more jobs for other men. If profits go to swell a personal
fortune, that is one thing; if they go to provide a sounds^
basis for business, better working coiid\VKma.\iftVwst ^la.'gfa.*

16i *^^^IY LIFE AND WORK

more extended employment — that is quite another thing.
Capital thus employed should not be carelessly tampered
with. It is for the service of aU, though it may be under
the direction of one.

, Profits belong in three places: they belong to the busi-
ness — ^to keep it steady, progressive, and sound. They
belong to the men who helped produce them. And they
belong also, in part, to the pubhc. A successful business
is profitable to all three of these interests — ^planner, pro-
ducer, and pim^aser.

People whose profits are excessive when measured by
any sound standard should be the first to cut prices.
But they never are. They pass all their extra costs down
the line until the whole burden is borne by the consumer;
and besides doing that, they charge the consumer a per-
centage on the increased charges. Their whole business
philosophy is: "Get while the getting is good." They are
the speculators, the exploiters, the no-good element that
is always injuring legitimate business. There is nothing
to be expected from them. They have no vision. They
cannot see beyond their own cash registers.
1 These people can talk more easily about a 10 or 20 per
cent, cut in wages than they can about a 10 or 20 per cent,
cut in profits. But a busiaess man, surveying the whole
community in all its interests and wishing to serve that
community, ought to be able to make his contribution to
stability.

It has been our policy always to keep on hand a large
amount of cash — ^the cash balance in recent years has
usually been in excess of fifty million dollars^ Thisjs de-
posited in banks all over the country. We do not bor-
row but we have established lines of credit, so that if we
so cared we might raise a very large amount of money by
bank borrowing. But keeping tiie cash reserve makes
bojTOwing unnecessary — our 'provision is only to be pre*

MONET AND GOODS 165

pared to meet an emergency. I have no prejudice agtunst
proper boirowing. It is merely that I do not want to run
the danger of having the control of the business and hence
the particular idea of service to which I am devoted taken
into other hands.

A considerable part of finance is in the overcoming of
seasonal operation. The flow of money ought to be
nearly continuous. One must work steadily in order to
work profitably. Shutting down involves great waste.
It brings the waste of imemployment of men, the waste
of unemployment of equipment, and the waste of re-
stricted future sales through the higher prices of inter-
rupted production. That has been one of the problems
we had to meet. We could not manufacture cars to stock
dining the winter months when purohases are less than in
spring or summer. Where or how could any one store half
a miUion cars? And if stored, how could they be shipped
in the rush season? And who would find the money to
carry sacb. a stock of cars even if they could be stored?

Seasonal work is hard on the working force. Good
mechanics will not accept jobs that are good for only part of
the year. To work in full force twelve months of the year
guarantees workmen of ability, builds up a permanent
manufacturing organization, and continually improves
the product — ^the men in the factory, through uninter-
rupted service, become more familiar with the operations.

The factory must build, the sales department must sell,
and the dealer must buy cars all the year through, if each
would enjoy the maximiun profit to be derived from the
business. If the retail buyer will not consider purchasing
except in "seasons," a campaign of education needs to be
waged, proving the all-the-year-around value of a car
rather than the limited-season value. And while the edu-
cating is being done, the manufacturer must build, and the
dealer must buy, in anticipation oi bus mem .

lee MY LIFE AND WORK

We were the first to meet the problem in the automobile
business. The selling of Ford cars is a merchandising
proposition. In the days when every car was built to
order and 50 cars a month a big output, it was reasonable
to wait for the sale before ordering. The manufacturer
waited for the order before building.

We very shortly found that we could not do business on
order. The factory could not be built large enou^ — even
were it desirable — ^to make between March and August
all the cars that were ordered during those months.
Therefore, years ago began the campaign of education to
demonstrate that a Ford was not a summer luxury but a
year-round necessity. Coupled with that came the edu-
cation of the dealer into the knowledge that even if he
could not sell so many cars in winter as in summer it wou!d
pay him to stock in winter for the summer and thus be able
to make instant deUvery. Both plans have worked out;
in most parts of the country cars are used almost as much
in winter as in summer. It has been found that they will
run in snow, ice, or mud—in anything. Hence the winter
sales are constantly growing larger and the seasonal de-
mand is in part lifted from the dealer. And he finds it
profitable to buy ahead in anticipation of needs. TTius we
have no seasons in the plant; the production, up until the
last couple of years, has been continuous excepting for the
annual shut downs for inventory. We have had an in-
terruption during the period of extreme depression but it
was an interruption made necessary in the process of read-
justing ourselves to the market conditions.

In order to attain continuous production and hence a
continuous turning over of money we have had to plan
our operations with extreme care. The plan of production
is worked out very carefully each month between the sales
and production departments, with the object of producing
enough cars so that those in transit will take care of the or-

MONET AND GOODS 167

ders in hand. Fonnerly, when we assembled and shipped
cars, this was of the highest importance because we had no
place in which to store finished cars. Now we ship parts
instead of cars and assemble only those required for the
Detroit district. That makes the planning no less im-
portant, for if the production stream and the order stream
are not approximately equal we shoiild be either jammed
with unsold parts or behind in our orders. TPhen you are
turning out the parts to make 4,000 cars a day, just a very
little carelessness in overestimating orders wiU pile up a
finished inventory running into the millions. That makes
tiie balancing of operations an exceedingly delicate matter.
In order to earn the proper profit on our narrow margin
we must have a rapid turnover. We make cars to sell, not
to store, and a month's unsold production would turn into
a sum the interest on which alone would be enormous.
The production is planned a year ahead and the number
of cars to be made in each month of the year is sdieduled,
for of course it is a big problem to have the raw materials
and such parts as we sUll buy from the outside flowing in
consonance with production. We can no more afford to
carry large stocks of finished than we can of raw material.
Everything has to move in and move out. And we have
had some narrow escapes. Some years ago the plant of the
Diamond Manufacturing Company burned down. They
were making radiator parts for us and the brass parts —
tubings and castings. We had to move quickly or take a
big loss. We got together the heads of all our depart-
ments, the pattern-makers and the draughtsmen. They
worked from twenty-four to forty-eight hours on a stretch.
They made new patterns; the Diamond Company leased a
plant and got some machinery in by express. We fur-
nished the other equipment for them and in twenty days
they were shipping again. We had enough stock on. \:ia.-&.A.
to carry us over, say, for seven or eVgVt da'js»\iMV'CQa\.Ss«i

168 MY LIFE AND WORK

prevented us shipping cars for ten or fifteen days. Ex-
cept for our having stock ahead it would have held us up
for twenty days — and our expenses would have gone right
on.

To repeat. The place in which to finuice is the shop.
It has never failed us, and once, when it was thought that
we were hard up for money, it served rather conclusively
to demonstrate how much better finance can be conducted
from the inside than from the outside.

CHAPTER Xn

Monet — AIasteb ob Seevant?

r^ DECEMBER, 1920, business the country over was
marking time. More automobile plants were closed
than were open and quite a number of those which were
closed were complete^ in the charge of bankers. Rumours
of bad financial condition were afloat concerning near^
every industrial company, and I became interested when
the reports persisted that the Ford Motor Company not
only needed money but could not get it. I have become
accustomed to all kinds of nunours about our company — so'
much so, that nowadays I rarely deny any sort of rumour.
But these reports diflfered from all previous ones. Tliey
were so exact and circumstantial. I learned that I
had overcome my prejudice against borrowing and that I
might be found almost any day down in Wall Street, hat
in hand, asking for money. And rumour went even further
and said that no one would give me money and that I
might have to break up and go out of business.

It is true that we did have a problem. In 1919 we
had borrowed $70,000,000 on notes to buy the full stock
interest in the Ford Motor Company. On this we had
$33,000,000 left to pay. We had $18,000,000 in income
taxes due or shortly to become due to the Government,
and also we intended to pay our usual bonus for the year
to the workmen, which amounted to $7,000,000. Alto-
gether, between January 1st and April 18, 1921, we had
payments ahead totalling $58,000,000. We had only
$20,000,000 in bank. Our balance sheet was more or less
common knowledge and I suppose it was \Ak«a. lot ^raii^R^

170 MY LIFE AND WORK

that we could not raise the $38,000,000 needed without
borrowing. For that is quite a large sum of money.
Without the aid of Wall Street such a sum could not easily
and quickly be raised. We were perfectly good for the
money. Two years before we had borrowed $70,000,000.
And since our whole property was unencumbered and we
had no commercial debts, the matter of lending a large
sum to us would not ordinarily have been a matter of mo-
ment. In fact, it would have been good banking business.

However, I began to see that our need for money was
being industriously circulated as an evidence of impending
failure. Then I began to suspect that, although the ru-
■ mours came in news dispatches from all over the coimtry,
they might perhaps be traced to a single source. This be-
hef was further strengthened when we were informed that
a very fat financial editor was at Battle Creek sending out
bulletins concerning the acuteness of our financial con-
dition. Therefore, I took care not to deny a single ru-
mour. We had made our financial plans and they did not
include borrowing money.

I cannot too greatly emphasize that the very worst
time to borrow money is when the banking people think
that you need money. In the last chapter I outlined our
financial principles. We simply applied those principles.
We planned a thorough house-cleaning.

Go back a bit and see what the conditions were. Along
in the early part of 1920 came the first indications that the
feverish speculative business engendered by the war was
not going to continue. A few concerns that had sprung
out of the war and had no real reason for existence failed.
People slowed down in their buying. Our own sales kept
right along, but we knew that sooner or later they woidd
drop off. I thou^t seriously of cutting prices, but the
costs of manufacturing everywhere were out of control.
Labour gave less and less in. letum for high wages. The

MONEY— MASTER OR SERVANT? 171

suppliers of raw material refused even to think of coming
back to earth. The very plain warnings of the storm
went quite unheeded.

In June our own sales began to be affected. They grew
less ^id less each month from June on until September.
We had to do something to bring our product within the
purchasing power of the pubhc, and not only that, we had
to do something drastic enough to demonstrate to the
pubhc that we were actually playing the game and not
just shamming. Therefore in September we cut the price
of the toinring car from $575 to $440. We cut the price
far below the cost of production, for we were still making
from stock bought at boom prices. The cut created a
considerable sensation. We received a deal of criticism.
It was said that we were disturbing conditions. That is
exactly what we were trying to do. We wanted to do our
part in bringing prices from an artificial to a natural level.
I am firmly of the opinion that if at this time or earher
manufacturers and distributors had all made drastic cuts
in their prices and had put through thorough house-
cleanings we should not have so long a business depression.
Hanging on in the hope of getting higher prices simply
delayed adjustment. Nobody got the higher prices they
hoped for, and if the losses had been taken all at once, not
only would the productive and the buying powers of the
country have become harmonized, but we should have been
saved this long period of general idleness. Hanging on in
the hope of higher prices merely made the losses greater,
because those who hung on had to pay interest on their
high-priced stocks and also lost the profits they might
have made by working on a sensible basis. Unemploy-
ment cut down wage distribution and thus the buyer and
file seller became more and more separated. There was a
lot of flurried talk of arranging to give vast credits to
Europe — the idea being that theiebv ^"^ \fl!^-\i^*:R^

172 MY LIFE AND WORK

stocks might be palmed off. Of course the proposals
were not put in any such crude fashion, and I think that
quite a lot of people sincerely believed that if large credits
were extended abroad even without a hope of the payment
of either pnncipal or interest, American business would
somehow be benefited. It is true tliat if these credits
were taken by American banks, those who had high-
priced stocks might have gotten rid of them at a profit,
but the banks would have acquired so much frozen credit
that they would have more nearly resembled ice houses
than banks. I suppose it is natural to hang on to the
possibility of profits until the very last moment, but it is
not good business.

Our own sales, after the cut, increased, but soon they
began to fall off again. We were not sufficiently within
the purchasing power of the country to make buying easy.
Retwl prices generally had not touched bottom. The
public distrusted all prices. We laid our plans for another
cut and we kept our production around one hundred
thousand cars a month. This production was not justified
by oxur sales but we wanted to have as much as possible of
our raw material transformed into finished product before
we shut down. We knew that we would have to shut down
in order to take an inventory and clean house. We
wanted to open with another big cut and to have cars on
hand to supply the demand. Then the new cars could be
built out of material bought at lower prices. We de-
termined that we were going to get lower prices.

We diut down in December with the intention of open-
ing again in about two weeks. We found so much to do
that actually we did not open for nearly six weeks. The
moment that we shut down the rumours concerning our
financial condition became more and more active. I know
that a great many people hoped that we should have to go
out after money — ^for, vjeie we aeeking money, then we

MONEY— MASTER OR SERVANT? ITS

^ould have to come to terms. We did not ask for money.
We did not want money. We had one offer of money.
An officer of a New York bank called on me with a
financial plan which included a large loan and in which
also was an arrangement by which a representative of the
bankers would act as treasurer and take charge of the
finance of the company. Those people meant well
enough, I am quite sure. We did not want to borrow
money but it so happened that at the moment we were
without a treasurer. To that ext^it the bankers had
envisaged our condition correctly. I asked my son
Edsel to be treasurer as well as president of the company.
That fixed us up as to a treasurer, so there was really '
nothing at all that the bankers could do for us. j

Then we began our house-cleaning. During the war we'
had gone into m^iy kinds of war work and had thus been
forced to depart from our principle of a single product.
This had caused many new departments to be added.
The office force had eq)anded and mudi of the wasteful-
ness of scattered production had crept in. War work is
rush work and is wasteful work. We beg^i throwing out
everything that did not contribute to the production of
cars. I

The only immediate payment scheduled was the purely
voluntary one of a seven-million-dollar bonus to our work-
men. Tliere was no obligation to pay, but we wanted to
pay on the first of January. That we paid out of our
cash on hand.

Tliroughout the country we have thirty-five branches.
These are all assembling plants, but in twenty-two of them
parts are also manufactured. They had stopped the
making of parts but they went on assembling cars. At
the time of shutting down we had practic^ly no cars
in Detroit. We had shipped out all the parts, anddvxmiit
January tiie Detroit dealers actiuXLv "VsaA. \» ^ «a ^■■««^ .

174 MY LIFE AND WORK

afield as Chicago and Columbus to get cars for local needs.
The branches shipped to each dealer, under his yearly
quota, enough cars to cover about a month's sales.
The dealers worked hard on sales. During the latter part
of January we called in a skeleton organization of about
ten thousand men, mostly foremen, sub-foremen, and straw
bosses, and we started Highland Park into production.
"We collected our foreign accounts and sold our by-products.

TRien we were ready for full production. And gradually
into full production we went — on a profitable basis. The
house-cleaning swept out the waste that had botli made
the prices high and absorbed the profit. We sold off the
useless stuff. Before we had employed fifteen men per
car per day. Afterward we employed nine per car per day.
This did not mean that six out of fifteen men lost their jobs.
They only ceased being unproductive. We made that
cut by applying the rule that everything wid everybody
must produce or get out.

We cut our office forces in halves and offered the office
workers better jobs in the shops. Most of them took the
jobs. We abolished every order blank and every form
of statistics that did not directly aid in the production of a
car. We had been collecting tons of statistics because
they were interesting. But statistics wiU not construct
automobiles — so out they went.

We took out 60 per cent, of our telephone extensions.
Only a comparatively few men in any organization need
telephones. We formerly had a foreman for every five
men; now we have a foreman for every twenty men.
The other foremen are working on machines.

We cut the overhead charge from $146 a car to $93 a car,
and when you realize what this means on more than four
thousand cars a day you will have an idea how, not by
economy, not by wage-cutting, but by the elimination of
waste, it is possible to make an. "impossible" price.

MONEY— MASTER OR SERVANT? 175

Most important of all, we found out how to use less
money in oiu* business by speeding up the turnover.
And in increasing the tiunover rate, one of the most
important factors was the Detroit, Toledo, & Ironton
Railroad — ^whidi we purchased. The railroad took a large
place in the scheme of economy. To the road itself I have
given another chapter.

We discovered, after a little experim^iting, that freight
service could be unproved sufficiently to reduce the cycle
of manufacture from twenty-two to foiuteen days. That
is, raw material could be bought, manufactured, and the
finished product put into the hands of the distributor in
(roughly) 33 per cent, less time than before. We had been
carrying an inventory of around $60,000,000 to insure un-
interrupted production. Cutting down the time one
third released $20,000,000, or $1,200,000 a year in interest.
Coimting the finished inventory, we saved approximately
$8,000,000 more— that is, we were able to release $28,000,-
000 in capital and save the raterest on that sum.

On January 1st we had $20,000,000. On April 1st we
had $87,300,000, or $27,300,000 more than we needed to
wipe out all our indebtedness. That is what boring into
the business did for us! This amount came to us in these
items:

Cash on hand, January $20,000,000

Stock on hand turned into cash, January 1 to April 1 . 24,700,000

Speeding up transit of goods released 28,000,000

Collected from agents in foreign countries .... 3,000,000

Sale of by-producta 3,700,000

Sale of Liberty Bonds 7,000,000

Total . $87,300,000

Now I have told about all this not in the way of an
exploit, but to point out how a business may find ■k.-
sources within itself instead of borrowvng,, axA «!iSRi \» ,

176 MY LIFE AND WORK

start a Kttle thinking as to whether the form of our mon^
may not put a premium on borrowing and thus give far
too great a place in Uf e to the bankers.

We could have borrowed $40,000,000— more had we
wanted to. Suppose we had borrowed, what would have
happened? Should we have been better fitted to go on
with oiu* business? Or worse fitted? K we had borrowed
we should not have been under the necessity of finding
methods to cheapen production. Had we been able to
obtain the money at 6 per cent, flat — and we should in
commissions and the like have had to pay more than that
— ^the interest charge alone on a yearly production of
500,000 cars would have amoimted to about four dollars a
car. Therefore we should now be without the benefit d
better production and loaded with a heavy debt. Our cars
would probably cost about one hundred dollars more than
they do; hence we should have a smaller production,
for we could not have so many buyers; we should employ
fewer men, and in short, should not be able to serve to
the utmost. You will note that the financiers proposed
to cure by lending money and not by bettering methods.l
They did not suggest putting in an engineer;' they wanted
to put in a treasurer.

And that is the danger of having bankers in business.
They think solely in terms of money. They think of a
factory as making money, not goods. They want to watch
the money, not the efficiency of production. They cannot
comprehend that a business never stands still, it must go |
forward or go back. They regard a reduction in prices as a i
throwing away of profit instead of as a building of business. '

Bankers play far too great a part In the conduct of
industry. Most business men will privately admit that
fact. Ttey will seldom publicly admit it because they are
afraid of their bankers. It required less skill to make a
tortune dealing in money than dealing in producti<m.

MONEY— MASTER OR SERVANT? 177

The average successful banker is by no means so intelligent
and resourceful a man as is the average successful business
man. Yet the buiker through his control of credit
practically controls the average business man.

There has been a great readung out by bankers in the
last fifteen or twenty years — and especially since the war —
and the Federal Reserve System for a time put into their
hands an almost limitless supply of credit. Tlie banker is,
as I have noted, by training and because of his position,
totally unsuited to the conduct of industry. K, therefore,
the controllers of credit have lately acquired thb very
large power, is it not to be taken as a sign that there is
something wrong with the financial system that gives to
finance instead of to service the predominant power in
I industry ? It was not the industrial aounen of the bankers
that brought them into the management of industry.
Everyone will admit that. They were pushed, there, '
willy-nilly, by the system itself. Therefore, I personally
want to discover whether we are operating under the best
financial system.

Now, let me say at once that my objection to bankers
bas nothing to do with personalities. I am not against
bankers as such. We stand very much in need of
thoughtful men, skilled in finance. The world cannot go
on without banking fadlities. We have to have money.
We have to have credit. Otherwise the fruits of pro-
duction could not be exchanged. We have to have
capital. Without it there could be no production. But
whether we have based our banking and oxji credit on
the right foundation is quite another matter.

It is no part of my thought to attack our financial
system. I am not in the position of one who has been
beaten by the system and wants revenge. It does not
make the least difference to me personally what banketa
do because we ha ve been able to manage qmi a^oia^ ■"jr^Oossv:*.

178 MY LIFE AND WORK

outside financial aid. My inquiry is prompted by no
personal motive whatsoever. I only want to know
whether the greatest good is being rendered to the greatest
number.

No finandal system is good which favours one class of
producers over another. We want to discover whether it
is not possible to take away power which is not based on
wealth creation. Any sort of class legislation is pernicious.
I think that the country's production has become So
changed in its methods that gold is not the best medium
with which it may be measured, and that the gold stand-
ard as a control of credit gives, as it is now (and I believe
inevitably) administered, class advantage. The ultimate
check on credit is the amount of gold in the coxmtry,
regardless of the amount of wealth in the country.

I am not prepared to dogmatize on the subject of money
' or credit. As far as money and credit are concerned,
no one as yet knows enough about them to dogmatize.
The whole question will have to be settled as all other
questions of real importance have to be settled, and that
is by cautious, well-founded experiment. And I am not
inclined to go beyond cautious experiments. We have to
proceed step by step and very carefully. The question
is not political, it is economic, and I am perfectly certain
that helping the people to think on the question is wholly
advantageous. They will not act without adequate
knowledge, and thus cause disaster, if a sincere eflfort is
made to provide them with knowledge. The money
question has first place in multitudes of minds of all
degrees or power. But a glance at most of the ciu^-all
systems shows how contradictory they are. The majority
of them make the assumption of honesty among mankind,
to begin with, and that, of course, is a prime defect.
Even our present system would work splendidly if all men
were honest. As a matter of fact, the whole money

MONET— MASTER OR SERVANT? 179

question is 95 per cent, human nature; and your success- i
ful system must check hiunan nature, not depsid upon !
it.

The people are thinking about the money question;
and if the money masters have any information whioh
they think the people ought to have to prevent them going
astray, now is the time to give it. The days are fast
slipping away when the fear of credit curtaihnent will
avail, or when wordy slogans will affright. The people
are natm-ally conservative. They are more ifconservative
than the financiers. Those who believe that the people
are so easily led that they would permit printing presses
to run off money like milk tickets do not understand
them. It is ttie innate conservation of , the people that
has kept our money good in spite of the fantastic tricks
which the financiers play — and whidi they cover up with
high technical terms.

The people are on the side of sound money. They are
so unalterably on the side of soimd money that it is a
serious question how they would regard the system under
which they Kve, if they once knew what the initiated can
do with it.

The present money system is not going to be changed
by speech-making or political sensationahsm or economic
experiment. It is going to change under the pressure
of conditions — conditions that we cannot control and
pressure that we cannot control. These conditions are
now with us; that pressure is now upon us.

The people must be helped to think naturally about
money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it
money, and what are the possible tricks of the present
system which put nations and peoples under control of the
few.

Money, after all, is extremely simple. It is a part of out
transportation system. It is a ampVe anA. ^caesA. Taa'Qc.sA

180 MY LIFE AND WORK '

of conveying goods from one person to another. Money
is in itself most admirable. It is essential. It is not
intrinsically evil. It is one of tlie most useful devices
in social life. And when it does what it was intended
to do, it is all help and no hindrance.

But money should always be money. A foot is always
twelve inches, but when is a dollar a dollar? If ton wei^ts
changed in the coal yard, and peck measures changed in
the grocery, and yard sticks were to-day 42 inches and
to-morrow 33 indies (by some occult process called
"exchange") the people would mighty soon remedy that.
When a dollar is not always a dollar, when the IOO-«ent
dollar becomes the 65-cent dollar, and then the 50-cent
dollar, and then the 47-cent dollar, as tlie good old American
gold and silver dollars did, what is the use of yelling about
"cheap money," "depreciated money"? A dollar that
stays 100 cents is as necessary as a pound that stays
16 ounces and a yard that stays 36 inches.

The bankers who do straight banking should regard
themselves as naturally the first men to probe and under-
stand oiu- monetary system — instead of being content with
the mastery of local banking-house methods; and if they
would deprive the gamblers in bank balances of the name
of "banker" and oust them once for all from the place of
influence which that name gives them, banking would be
restored and established as the public service it ought to be,
and the iniquities of the present monetary system and
financial devices would be lifted from the shoulders of the
people.

There is an "if" here, of coiurse. But it is not insur-
mountable. Affairs are coming to a jam as it is, and if
those who possess technical facility do not engage to remedy
the case, those who lack that facihty may attempt it.
Nothing is more foolish than for any class to assume that
progress is an attach upon it. Progress is only a call made

MONEY— MASTER OR SERVANT? 181

upon it to lend its experience for the general advancement.
It is only those who are unwise who will attempt to ob-
struct progress and thereby become its victims. All of us
are here together, all of us must go forward together; it is
perfectly silly for any man or class to take lunbrage at the
stirring of progress. If financiers feel that progress is only
the restlessness of weak-minded persons, if they regard all
suggestions of betterment as a personal slap, then they are
taking the part which proves more than anything else
could their unfitness to continue in their leadership.

If the present faulty system is more profitable to a
financier than a more perfect system would be, and if that
financier values his few remaining years of personal profits
more highly than he would value the honour of making a
contribution to the life of the world by helping to erect a
better system, then there is no way of preventing a clash
of interests. But it is fair to say to the selfish financial,
interests that, if their fight is waged to perpetuate a system
just because it profits them, then their fight is already lost.
Why should finance fear? The world will still be here.
Men, will do business with one another. There will be
money and there will be need of masters of the, mechanism
of money. Nothing is going to depart but the knots and
tangles. There wiU be some readjustments, of course.
Banks will no longer be the masters of industry. They
will be the servants of industry. Business will control
money instead of money controlling business. The ruinous
interest system will be greatly modified. Banking will
not be a risk, but a service. Banks will begin to do much
more for the people than they do now, and instead of being
the most expensive businesses in the world to manage, and
the most highly profitable in the matter of dividends, they
will become less costly, and the profits of their operation
will go to the community whidi they serve.

Two facts of the old order ate iuni&Kto&TAA^.. "^Ns.'^sw.

182 MY LIFE AKD WORK

that within the nation itself the tendency of finanraal
control is toward its largest centralized banking institu-
tions — either a government bank or a closely allied group
of private financiers. There is always in every nation a
definite control of credit by private or semi-pubhc interests.
Second: in the world as a whole the same centralizing
tenden(^ is operative. An American credit is under
control of New York interests, as before the war world
credit was controlled in London — the British pound ster-
ling was the standard of exchange for the world's trade.

Two methods of reform are open to us, one beginning at
the bottom and one beginning at the top. The latter is the
more orderly way, the former is being tried in Russia.
If our reform should be^n at the top it will require a social
vision and an altruistic fervour of a sincerity and intensity
which is wholly inconsistent with selfish shrewdness.

The wealth of the world neither consists in nor is ade-
quately represented by the money of the world. Gold
itself is not a valuable commodity. It is no more wealth
than hat checks are hats. But it can be so manipulated,
as the sign of wealth, as to give its owners or controllers
the whip-hand over the credit which producers of retd
wealth require. Dealing in money, the commodity of
exchange, is a very lucrative business. When money lU
self becomes an article of commerce to be bought and sold
before real wealth can be moved or exchanged, the usurers
and speculators are thereby permitted to lay a tax on
production. The hold which controllers of money are able
to maintain on productive forces is seen to be more power-
ful when it is remembered that, although money is supposed
to represent the real wealth of the world, there is always
much more wealth than there is money, and real weaJth is
often compelled to wait upon money, thus leading to that
most paradoxical situation — a world filled with wealth
bat saffeiing want.

MONEY— MASTER OR SERVANT? 188,

These facts are not merely fiscal, to be cast into figures
and left there. They are instinct with human destiny
and they bleed. The poverty of the world is seldom caused
by lack of goods but by a "money stringency." Com-
mercial competition between nations, which leads to
international rivalry and ill-will, which in their turn breed
wars — these are some of the human significations of these
facts. Thus poverty and war, two great preventable evils,
grow on a single stem.

Let us see if a be^nning toward a better method can-
not be made.

CHAPTER Xm
Why Be Poor?

POVERTY ' springs from a number of soxuves, the
more important of which are controllable. So does
L special privilege. I think it is entirely feasible to

abolish both poverty and special privil^e — and there
can be no question but that their abolition is desirable.
' Both are unnatural, but it is work, not law, to which we
must look for results.

By poverty I mean the lack of reasonably sufficient
food, housing, and dothing for an individual or a family.
There will have to be differences in the grades of suste-
nance. M«i are not equal in mentality or in physique.
Any plan which st^vts with the assumption that men are or
ought to be equal is unnatural and therefore unworkable.
There can be no feasible or desirable process of levelling
down. Such a course only promotes poverty by making
it universal instead of exceptional. Forcing the efficient
producer to become inefficient does not make the inef-
ficient producer more efficient. Poverty can be done away
with only by plenty, and we have now gone far enough
along in the science of production to be able to see, as a
natiu-al development, the day when production and dis-
tribution will be so scientific that all may have according
to ability and industry.

The extreme Socialists went wide of the mark in their
reasoning that industry would inevitably crush the worker.
Modem industry is gradually lifting the worker and the
world. We only need to know more about planning and
methods. The best results can and will be brought about

WHY BE POOK? 185

by individual initiative and ingenuity — by intelligent
individual leadership. The government, because it is
essentially negative, cannot give positive aid to any
really constructive programme. It can give negative aid
— by removing obstructions to progress and by ceasing to
be a burden upon the community.

The underlying causes of poverty, as I can see them,
are essentially due to the bad adjustment between produc-
tion and distribution, in both industry and agriculture —
between the source of power and its application. The
wastes due to lack of adjustment are stupendous. All of
these wastes must fall before' intelligent leadership
consecrated to service. So long as leadership thinks
more of money than it does of service, the wastes will
continue. Waste is prevented by far-sighted not by
short-sighted men. Short-sighted men think first of
money. They cannot see waste. They think of service
as altruistic instead of as the most practical thing in th*
world. They cannot get far enough away from the
little things to see the big things — to see the biggest thing
of all, which is that opportimist production from a purely
money standpoint is the least profitable.

Service can be based upon altruism, but that sort of
service is not usually the best. The sentimental trips up
the practical.

It is not that the industrial enterprises are unable
fairly to distribute a share of the wealth which they create.
It is simply that the waste is so great that there is not a
sufficient share for everyone engaged, notwithstanding the
fact that the product is usually sold at so high a price as
to restrict its fullest consumption.

Take some of the wastes. Take the wastes of power.
The Mississippi Valley is without coal. Through its
centre pour many millions of potential horac\jcy«'et —
the Mississippi River. But if the peo^VeV^ \\s\i«xi&a'^^s*» ^

18» MY LlFE AND WORK

powur or heat they buy coal that has been hauled hundreds
of miles and consequently has to be sold at tar above its
worth as heat or power. Or if they cannot afford to biQ'
this expensive coal, they go out and cut down trees, there-
l^ depriving themselves of one of the great conserves of
water power. Until recently they never thought of the
power at hand whidi, at next to nothing beyond the
initial cost, could heat, li^t, cook, and work for the huge
peculation which that valley is destined to support.

The cure of poverty is not in personal economy but in
better production. The "thrift" and "economy" ideas
have been overworked. The word "economy" represents
a feu*. The great and tragic fact of waste is impressed
on a mind by some circumstance, usually of a most
materialistic kind. There comes a violent reaction
against extravagance — ^the mind catches hold of the idea
of "economy." But it only flies from a greater to a lesser
evil; it does not make the full journey from error to truth.

Economy is the rule of half-alivej minds. There can be
no doubt that it is better than waste; neither can there be
any doubt that it is not as good, as use. People who pride
themselves on their economy take it as a virtue. But
what is more pitiable than a poor, pinched mind spending
the rich days and years clutching a few bits of metal?
What can be fine about paring the necessities of hfe to the
very quick? We all know ** economical people" who
seem to be ni^ardly even about the amoimt of air they
breathe and the amount of appreciation they will allow
themselves to give to anything. They shrivel — ^body and
soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of hfe,
the sap of living. For there are two kinds of waste —
that of the prodigal who throws his substance away in
riotous hving, and that of the sluggard who allows his
substance to rot from non-use. The rigid economizer is
Jn dsnger ot being classed with the sluggard. Extrava-^

WHY BE POOR? 187

gance is usually a reaction from suppresaouof expenditure. • I
Economy is likely to be a reaction from extravagance. t

Everything was given us to use. There is no evil from
which we suffer that did not come about through misuse.
The worst sin we can commit against the things of our
common life is to misuse them. "Misuse" is the wider
term. We like to say "waste,** but waste is only one
phase of misuse. All waste is misuse; all misuse is waste. :

It is possible even to overemphasize the saving habit.
It is proper and desirable that everyone have a margin;
it is really wasteful not to have one — ^if you can have one, '
But it can be overdone. We teach children to save
their money. As an attempt to counteract thoughtless ) ,
and selfish expenditure, that has a value. But it is not "
ptositive; it does not lead the child out into the safe and
useful avenues of self-expression or self-e^>enditure. To
teach a child to invest and use is better than to teach him
to save. Most men who are laboriously saving a few
dollars would do better to invest those few dollars — first
in themselves, and then in some useful work. Eventually
they would have more to save. Young men ought to
invest rather than save. They ought to invest in them-
selves to increase creative value; after they have taken
themselves to the peak of usefulness, then will be time
enough to think of laying aside, as a fixed policy, a certain
substantial share of income. You are not **saving"
when you prevent yourself from becoming more productive.
You are really taking away from yoxu- ultimate capital;
you are reducing the value of one of nature's investments.
The principle of use is the true guide. Use is positive,
active, life-giving. Use is alive. Use adds to the siun
of good.

Personal want may be avoided without changing the
general condition. Wage increases, price increases, yrofi*.
increases, other Hnds of increasea_d.ea\igaeA.\ftNsKa%T^ss».

188 MY LIFE AND WORK

money here or money there, are only attempts of this or
that class to get out of the fire — regardless of what may
happen to everyone else. There is a foolish belief that U
only the money can be gotten, somehow the storm can
be weathered. Labour believes that if it can get more
wages, it can weather the storm. Capital thinks that if
it can get more profits, it can weather the storm. There
is a pathetic faith in what money can do. Money is
very useful in normal times, but money has no more value
than the people put into it by production, and it can be so
misused. It can be so superstitiously worshipped as a sub-
stitute for real wealth as to destroy its value altogether.

The idea persists that there exists an essential conflict
between industry and the farm. There is no such con-
flict. It is nonsense to say that because the cities are
overcrowded everybody ought to go back to the farm.
If everybody did so farming would soon decline as a satis-
factory occupation. It is not more sensible for everyone
to flock to the manufacturing towns. If the farms be
deserted, of what use are manufactm^rsP A reciproc-
ity can exist between farming and manufacturing. The
manufacturer can give the farmer what he needs to be a
good farmer, and the farmer and other producers of raw
materials can give the manufacturer what he needs to be
a good manufacturer. Then with transportation as a
messenger, we shall have a stable and a sound system on
built service. If we live in smaller communities where
the tension of living is not so high, and where the products
of the fields and gardens can be had without the inter-
ference of so many profiteers, there will be little poverty or
unrest.

Look at this whole matter of seasonal work. Take
building as an example of a seasonal trade. What a waste
of power it is to allow builders to hibernate through the
winter, waiting for the building season to come around!

WHY BE POOR? 189

And what an equal waste of skill it is to force experienced
artisans who have gone into factories to escape the loss of
the winter season to stay in the factory jobs through the
building season becaiLse they are afraid tiiey may not get
their factory places back in tixe winter. What a waste this
all-year system has been! K the farmer could get away
from the shop to till his farm in the planting, growing, and
harvesting seasons (they are only a small part of the year,
after all), and if the builder could get away from the shop
to ply his useful trade in its season, how much better
they would be, and how much more smoothly the world
would proceed.

Suppose we all moved outdoors every spring and sxunmer
and lived the wholesome life of the outdoors for three or
four months ! We could not have " slack times. "

The farm has its dull season. That is the time for the
farmer to come into the factory and help produce the
things he needs to till the farm. The factory dso has its
dull season. That is the time for the workmen to go
out to the land to help produce food. Thus we mi^t
take the slack out of work and restore the balance between
the artiScial and the natural.

But not the least benefit would be the more balanced
view of life we should thus obtain. The mixing of the
arts is not only beneficial in a material way, but it makes
for breadth of mind and fairness of judgment. A great
deal of our unrest to-day is the result of narrow, preju-
diced judgment. If our work were more diversified, if we
saw more sides of hfe, if we saw how necessary was one
factor to another, we should be more balanced. Every
man is better for a period of work under the open sky.

It is not at all impossible. What is desirable and right
is never impossible. It would only mean a httle team- .
work — a little less attention to greedy ambition and «.
little more attention to life.

190 MY LIFE AND WOKK

Those who are rich find it desirable to go away for three
or four months a year and dawdle in idleness around some
fancy winter or simuner resort. The rank and file of the
American people would not waste their time that way even
if they could. But they would provide the team-work
necessary for an outdoor, seasonal employment.

It is hardly possible to doubt that much of the imrest
we see about us is the result of unnatural modes of life,
Men who do the same thing continuously the year around
and are shut away from the health of the sun and the
spaciousness of the great out of doors are hardly to be
blamed if they see matters in a distorted light. And
that applies equaUy to the capitalist and the worker.

What is there in life that should hamper normal and
wholesome modes of living? And what is there in in-
dustry incompatible with all the arts receiving in their
turn the attention of those qualified to serve m them?
It may be objected that if the forces of industry were
withdrawn from the shops every summer it would impede
production. But we must look at the matter from a
universal point of view. We must consider the increased
energy of the industrial forces after three or four months in
outdoor work. We must also consider the effect on the
cost of living which would result from a general return to
the fields.

We have, as I indicated in a previous chapter, been
working toward this combination of farm and factory
and witii entirely satisfactory results. At Northville, not
far from Detroit, we have a little factory making valves.
It is a little factory, but it makes a great many valves.
Both the management and the mechanism of the plant are
comparatively simple because it makes but one thing.
We do not have to search for skilled employees. The skill
is in the machine. The people of the countryside can
work in the plant part of the time and on the iaxm part of

WHY BE POOR? Ml

the time, for mechanical farming is not very hiborious.
The plant power is derived from water.

Another plant on a somewhat larger scale is in building
at Flat Rock, about fifteen miles from Detroit. We have
dammed the river, llie dam also serves as a bridge
for the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railway, whidi was in
need of a new bridge at that point, and a road for the
public — all in one construction. We are going to make
our glass at this point. The damming of the river gives
sufficient water for the floating to us of most of our raw
material. It also gives us our power through a hydro-
electric plant. And, being well out in the midst of the
farming country, there can be no possibility of crowding
or any of the ills incident to too great a concentration of
population. The men will have plots of groimd or farms
as well as their jobs in the factory, and these can be scat-
tered over fifteen or twenty miles surrounding — ^for of
course nowadays the workingman can come to the shop in
an automobile. There we shall have the combination of
agriculture and industriahsm and the entire absence of all
the evils of concentration.

The beUef that an industrial coimtry has to concentrate
its industries is not, in my opinion, well-foimded. That
is only a stage in industrial development. As we learn
more about manufacturing and learn to make articles with
interchangeable parts, then those parts can be made under
the best possible conditions. And these best possible
conditions, as far as the employees are concerned, are also
the best possible conditions from the manufacturing
standpoint. One could not put a great plant on a little
stream. One can put a small plant on a little stream, and
the combination of little plaits, each making a single part,
will make the whole cheaper than a vast factory would.
There are exceptions, as where casting has to be done.
In such ease, as at River Rougie, we ^aiA. ^o CRra&sma "^^i

192 MY LIFE AND WORK

making of the metal and the casting of it and also we want'
to use all of the waste power. This requires a large in-
vestment and a considerable force of men in one place.
But such combinations are the exception rather than
the rule, and there would not be enough of them seriously
to interfere with the process of breaking down the con-
centration of industry.

Industry will decentralize. There is no city that would
be rebuilt as it is, were it destroyed — which fact is in
itself a confession of our real estimate of our cities. The
city had a place to fill, a work to do. Doubtless the
country places would not have approximated their Hvable-
ness had it not been for the cities. By crowding together,
men have learned some secrets. They would never have
learned them alone in the coimtry. Sanitation, Ughting,
social organization — all these are products of men's
experience in the city. But also every social ailment
from which we to-day suffer originated and centres in the
big cities. You will find the smaller communities living
along in unison with the seasons, having neither extreme
poverty nor wealth — none of the violent plagues of up-
heave and unrest which afflict our great populations.
There is something about a city of a million people which
is imtamed and threatening. Thirty miles away, happy
and contented villages read of the ravings of the city!
A great city is really a helpless mass. Everything it uses
is carried to it. Stop transport and the city stops. It lives
off the shelves of stores. The shelves produce nothing.
The city cannot feed, clothe, warm, or house itself. City
conditions of work and living are so artificial that in-
stincts sometimes rebel against their unnaturdness.

And finally, the overhead expense of Uving or doing
business in the great cities is becoming so large as to be
unbearable. It places so great a tax upon hfe that there
is no surplus over to live on. The politicians have fotmd it

WHY BE POOR? 193

easy to borrow money and| they have borrowed to the
limit. Within the last decade the expense of running
every city in the country has tremendously increased.
A good part of that expense is for interest upon money
borrowed; the money has gone either into non-productive
brick, stone, and mortar, or into necessities of city life, such
as water supplies and sewage systems at far above a reason-
able cost. The cost of maintaining these works, the cost
of keeping in order great masses of people and traffic is
greater than the advantages derived from community life.
The modem city has been prodigal, it is to-day bankrupt,
and to-morrow it will cease to be.

The provision of a great amount of cheap and con-
venient power — not all at once, but as it may be used — ^will
do more than anything else to bring about the balancing
of life and the cutting of the waste which breeds poverty.
There is no single source of power. It may be that gener-
ating electricity by a steam plant at the mine mouth will
be the most economical method for one community.
Hydro-electric power may be best for another community.
But certainly in every community there ought to be a
central station to furnish cheap power — it ought to be held
as essential as a railway or a water supply. And we
could have every great source of power harnessed and
working for the common good were it not that the expense
of obtaining capital stands in the way. I think that we
shall have to revise some of our notions about capital.

Capital that a business makes for itself, that is employed
to expand the workman's opportunity and increase his
comfort and prosperity, and that is used to give more and
more men work, at the same time reducing the cost of
service to the public — that sort of capital, even though
it be xmder single control, is not a menace to humanity.
It is a working surplus held in trust and daily use for the
benefit of all. The holder of such. copftsiX. caxi. ?Kas.<:^

194 MY LIFE AND WORK

legard it as a personal reward. No man can view such a
surplus as his own, for he did not create it alone. It is the
joint product of his whole organization. The owner's
idea may have released all the energy and direction, but
certainly it did not supply all the energy and direction.
Every workman was a partner in the creation. No
business can possibly be considered only with reference
to to-day and to the individuals engaged in it. It must
have the means to carry on. The best wages ought to be
paid. A proper living ought to be assured every partici-
pant in tiie business — ^no matter what his part. But,
for the sake of that business's ability to support those
who work in it, a surplus has to be held somewhere. The
truly honest manufacturer holds his surplus profits in
that trust. Ultimately it does not matter where this
surplus be held nor who controls it; it is its use that matters.
Capital that is not constantly creating more and better
jobs is more useless than sand. Capital that is not
constantly making conditions of daily labour better and
the reward of daily labour more just, is not fulfilling its
highest fimction. The highest use of capital is not to
make more money, but to make money do more service for
the betterment of life. Unless we in our industries are
helping to splve the social problem, we are not doing our
prindpal work. We are not fully serving.

CHAPTER XIV
The Tractor and Power Farhinq

r' IS not generally known that our tractor, which we
call the "Fordson," was put into production about a
year before we had intended, because of the Allies'
war-time food emergency, and that all of our early pro-
duction (aside, of coiirse, from the trial and experimental
machines) went directly to England. We sent in all five
thousand tractors across the sea in the critical 1917-18
period when the submarines were busiest. Every one of
them arrived safely, and oflBcers of the British Govern-
ment have been good enough to say that without their aid
England could scarcely have met its food crisis.

It was these tractors, run mostly by women, that
ploughed up the old estates and golf com-ses and let all
England be planted and cultivated without taking away
from the fighting man power or crippling the forces in the
munition factories.

It came about in this way: The English food adminis-
tration, about the time that we entered the war in 1917,
saw that, with the German submarines torpedoing a
freighter almost every day, the already low supply of
shipping was going to be totally inadequate to carry the
American troops across the seas, to carry the essential
munitions for these troops and the Allies, to carry the food
for the fighting forces, and at the same time carry enough
food for the home population of England. It was then
that they began shipping out of England the wives and
families of the colonials and made plans for the growing o€
crops at home. The situation, was a gcave oofc. T^^"«ft-

196 MY LIFE AND WOKK

were not enou^ draft animals in all England to plough and
cultivate land to raise crops in sufficient volume to make
even a dent in the food imports. Power farming was
scarcely known, for the English farms were not, before the
war, big enough to warrant the piutihase of heavy, ex-
pensive fanu machinery, and espedally with agricultural
labour so cheap and plentiful. Various concerns in
England made tractors, but they were heavy affairs and
mostly run by steam. There were not enough of them^
to go around. More could not easily be made, for all the
factories were worlang on munitions, and even if they had
been made they were too big and clumsy for the average
field and in addition required the management of engineers.
We had put together several tractors at our Man-
chester plant for demonstration purposes. They had been
)made in the United States and merely assembled in
England. The Board of Agricxilture requested the Royal
'Agricultural Society to make a test of these tractors and
ireport. This is what they reported:

At the request of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, we
have examined two Ford tractors, rated at 25 h. p., at work plough-
ing-.—

First, cross-ploughing a fallow of strong land in a dirty condition,
and subsequently in a field of lighter land which had seeded itself
down into rough grass, and which afforded every opportunity of test-
ing the motor on the level and on a steep hill.

In the first trial, a 2-f urrow Oliver plough was used, ploughing on
an average B inches deep with a 16-uich wide furrow; a 3-furrow
Cockshutt plough was also used at the same depth with the breast
pitched 10 inches.

In the second trial, the S-furrow plough was used, ploughing an
average of 6 inches deep.

In both cases the motor did its work with ease, and on a measured
acre the time occupied was 1 hour SO minutes, with a constmiption
of 2} gaUons of paraffin per acre.

These results we consider very satisfactory.

The ploughs were not quite suitable to the land, and the tiactois,
consequently, were working at some disadvantage.

TRACTOR AND POWER FARMING 197

The total weight of the tractor fully loaded with fuel and water,
as weighed by us, was 23^ cwts.

The tractor is light for its power, and, consequently, light on the
land, is easily handled, turns in a small circle, and leaves a very narrow
headland.

The motor is quickly started up from cold on a small supply of
petrol.

After these trials we proceeded to Messrs. Ford's works at Trafford
Park, Manchester, where one of the motors had been sent to be
dismantled and inspected in detail.

We £nd the design of ample strength, and the work of first-rate
quality. We consider the driving-wheeb rather light, and we under-
stand that a new and stronger pattern b to be supplied in future.

The tractor is designed purely for working on the land, and the
wheels, which are fitted with spuds, should be provided with some
protection to enable them to travel on the road when moving from
farm to farm.

Bearing the above points in mind, we recommend, imder existing
circumstances, that steps be taken to construct immediately as many
of these tractors aa possible.

The report was signed by Prof. W. E. Dalby and F. S.
Courtney, engineering; R. N. Greaves, engineering and
agriculture; Robert W. Hobbs and Henry Overman, agri-
culture; Gilbert Greenall, honorary directors, and John E.
Cross, steward.

Almost immediately after the fiUng of that report we
received the following wire:

Have not received anything definite concerning shipment neces-
sary steel and plant for Cork factory. Under beat circumstances
however Cork factory production could not be available before next
spring. The need for food production in England is imperative and
large quantity of tractors must be available at earliest possible date
for purpose breaking up existing grass land and ploughing for Fall
wheat. Am requested by high authorities to appeal to Mr. Ford for
help. Would you be willing to send Sorensen and others with draw-
ings of everything necessary, loaning them to British Government
so that parts can be manufactured over here and assembled in Gov-
ernment factories under Sorensen's guidance? Can assure you
positively this suggestion is made in national interest and if carried
out will be done by the Government for the people with no maswl^R.-
turing or capitalist interest invested and no pTc&V\»vivt"0>aAft.\y3 vsq

198 MY LIFE AND WORK

interests wltatever. The matter is very ui^^t. Impos^ble to shqi
anything adequate from America because many thousand tractors
must be provided. Ford Tractor considered b^ and only suitable
design. Consequently imtional necessity entirely dependoit Mr.
Ford's design. My work prevents me coming America to presoit the
proposal personally. Urge favourable consideration and immediate
decision because every day is of vital importance. You may rely on
manufacturing facility for production here under strictest impiutial
Government controL Would welcome Sorensen and any and every
other assistance and guidance you can furnish from America. Cable
reply, Terry, Care of Harding "Prodome," London.

Fbodoux.

I understand that its sending was directed by the
British Cabinet. We at once cabled our entire willing-
ness to lend the drawings, the benefit of what experience
we had to date, and whatever men might be necessary to
get production under way, and on the next ship sent
Charles E. Sorensen with full drawings. Mr. Sorensen had
opened the Manchester plant and was familiar with
English conditions. He was in charge of the manufacture
of tractors in this country.

Mr. Sorensen started at work with the British officials to
the end of having the parts made and assembled in Eng-
land. Many of the materials which we used were special
and could not be obtained in England. All of their
factories equipped for doing casting and machine work
were filled with munition orders. It proved to be exceed-
ingly difficult for the Ministry to get tenders of any kind.
Then came June and a series of destructive air raids on
London. There was a crisis. Something had to be done,
and finally, after passing to and fro among half the facto-
ries of England, our men succeeded in getting the tenders
lodged with the Ministry.

Lord Milner exhibited these tenders to Mr. Sorensen.
Taking the best of them the price per tractor came to
about $1,500 without any guarantee of delivery.

"That price is out of all teason," said Mr. Sorens^L

^TRACTOR AND POWER FARMING i 199

"These should not cost more than $700 apiece."

"Can you make five thousand at that price?" asked
LordMUner.
"Yes," answered Mr. Sorensen.
"How long will it take you to deliver them?"
*' We will start shipping within sixty days. "
They signed a contract on the spot, which, among other
things, provided for an advance payment of 25 per cent,
of the total sum. Mr. Sorensen cabled us what he had
done and took the next boat home. The %5 per cent,
payment was, by the way, not touched by us until after
the entire contract was completed: we deposited it in a
kind of trust fund.

The tractor works was not ready to go into production.
The Highland Park plant might have been adapted, but
every machine in it was going day and night on essential
war work. There was only one liiing to do. We ran up
an emergency extension to our plant at Dearborn,
equipped it with machinery that was ordered by tele-
graph and mostly came by repress, and in less than sixty
days the first tractors were on the docks in New York
in the hands of the British authorities. They delayed
in getting cargo space, but on December 6, 1917, we re-
ceived this cable:

London, DeceanbCT S, 1917.
Sorensen,
Fordson, F. R. Dearborn.

First tractors arrived, wlien mil Smith and others leave. CaUe.

Febbt.

The entire shipment of five thousand tractors went
through within three months and that is why the tractors
were being used in England long before they were really
known in the United States.

The planning of the tractor really antedated llaa^. *A 'Cas.
motor car. Out on the farm my first es^Toossii&s -««:aa

200 MY LIFE AND WORK

with tractors, and it will be remembered that I was em-
ployed for some time by a manufactm'er of steam tractors
— the big heavy road and thresher engines. But I did
not see any future for the large tractors. Th^ were too
expensive for the small farm, required too much skill to
operate, and were much too heavy as compared with the
pull they exa-ted. And anyway, the public was more
interested in being carried than in being pulled; the horse-
less carriage made a greater appeal to the imagination.
And so it was that I practically dropped work upon a
tractor xmtU the automobile was in production. With
the automobile on the farms, the tractor became a
necessity. For then the farm^^ had been introduced to
power.

The farmer does not stand so much in need of new tools
as of power to run the tools that he has. I have followed
many a weary mile behind a plough and I know all the
drudgery of it. What a waste it is for a human being to
spend hours and days behind a slowly moving team of
horses when in the same time a tractor could do sis times
as much work! It is no wonder that, doing eveiything
slowly and by band, the average farmer has not been able
to earn more than a bare living whUe farm products are
never as plentiful and cheap as they ought to be.

As in the automobile, we wanted power — ^not weight.
The weight idea was firmly fixed in the minds of tractor
makers. It was thought that exc^s weight meant excess
pulling powCT — that the machine could not grip unless it
were heavy. And this in spite of the fact that a cat has
not much weight and is a pretty good cUmber. I have
already set out my ideas on weight. The only kind of
tractor that I thought worth working on was one that
would be light, strong, and so simple that any one could
run it. Also it had to be so cheap that any one could buy
it

TRACTOR AND POWER FARMING 201

With these ends in view, we worked for nearly fifteen
years on a design and spent some millions of dollars in
experiments. We followed exactly the same course as
with the automobile. Each part had to be as strong as it
was possible to make it, the parts had to be few in nmnber,
and the whole had to admit of quantity production. We
had some thought that perhaps the automobile engine
might be used and we conducted a few experiments with it.
But finally we became convinced that the kind of tractor
we wanted and the automobile had practically nothing in
common. It was the intention from the beginning that
the tractor should be made as a separate undertaking &om
the automobile and in a distinct plant. No plant is big
enough to make two articles.

The automobile is designed to carry; the tractor is de-
signed to pull — to climb. And that difference in fimction
made all the difference in the world in construction. The
hard problem was to get bearings that would stand up
against the heavy pull. We finally got them and a con-
struction which seems to give the best average perform-
ance under all conditions. We fixed upon a foiu:-cyhnder
engine that is started by gasoline but runs thereafter on
kerosene. The Ughtest weight that we could attain with
strength was 2,4S5 pounds. The grip is in the lugs on the
driving wheels — as in the claws of the cat.

In addition to its strictly pulling functions, the tractor,
to be of the greatest service, had also to be designed for
■ work as a stationary engine so that when it was not out on
the road or in the fields it might be hitched up with a belt
to run machinery. In short, it had to be a compact,
versatile power plant. And that it has been. It has not
only plou^ed, harrowed, cultivated, and reaped, but it has
also threshed, run grist mills, saw mills, and various other
sorts of mills, pulled stumps, ploughed snow, and dsiast
about everything that a plant oi moieta.te'ptyHet cssoS.^^^

202 MT LIFE AND WORK

from sheep-shearing to printing a newspaper. It has been
fitted with heavy tires to haul on roads, with sledge
runners for the woods and ice, and with rimmed wheels
to run on rails. When the shops in Detroit were shut
down by coal shortage, we got out the Dearborn Inde-
pendent by sending a tractor to the electro-typing factory —
stationing the tractor in the alley, sending up a belt four
stories, and making the plates by tractor power. Its use
in ninety-five distinct lines of service has been called to
cur attention, and probably we know only a fraction <rf the
uses.

The mechanism of the tractor is even more simple than
that of the automobile and it is manufactured in exactly
the same fashion. Until the present year, the production
has been held back by the lack of a suitable factory. The
first tractors had been made in the plant at Dearborn
which is now used as an experimental station. That was
not large enough to affect the economies of large-scale
production and it could not well be enlarged because
the design was to make the tractors at the River Rouge
plant, and that, until this year, was not in full oper-
ation.

Now that plant is completed for the making of tractors.
The work flows exactly as with the automobiles. Each
part is a separate departmental undertaking and each part
as it is finished joins the conveyor system which leads it to
its proper initial assembly and eventually into the final
assembly. Everything moves and there is no skilled
work. The capacity of the present plant is one million
tractors a year. That is the number we expect to make —
for the world needs inexpensive, general-utility powo"
plants more now than ever before — and also it now knows
enough about machinery to want such plants.

The first tractors, as I have said, went to England.
Tliejr were first offered in the United Stotea in 1918 at

TRACTOR AND POWER FARMING 20g

$750. In the next year, with the higher costs, the price
had to be made $885; in the middle of the year it was
possible again to make the introductory price of $750.
In 1920 we charged $790; in the next year we were suffi-
ciently familiar with the production to begin cutting.
The price came down to $625 and then in 1922 with the
River Rouge plant functioning we were able to cut to $395.
All of which shows what getting into scientific production
will do to a price. Just as I have no idea how cheaply
the Ford automobile can eventually be made, I have
no idea how cheaply the tractor can eventually be
made.

It is important that it shall be cheap. Otherwise power
wiU not go to all the farms. And they must all of them
have power. Within a few years a farm depending solely
on horse and hand power will be as much of a curiosity
as a factoiy run by a treadmill. The farmer must either
take up power or go out of business. The cost figures
make this inevitable. During the war the Government
made a test of a Fordson tractor to see how its costs
compared with doing the work with horses. The figures
on the tractor were taken at the high price plus freight.
The depreciation and repair items are not so great as the
report sets them forth, and even if they were, the prices are
cut in halves which would therefore cut the depreciation
and repair charge in halves. These are the figures:

COST, FOBDSON, $8S0. WEIABING LIFE, 4,800 HOUBS AT i ACRES FEB
HOUB, 3,840 ACRES

3,840 acres at $880; depreciation per acre 221

Etepairs for 3,840 acres, $100; per acre 026

Fuel cost, kerosene at 19 cents; 2 gal. per acre S8

I gal. oil per 8 acres; per acre 076

Driver, $2 per day, 8 acres; per acre 26

Cost of plou^ung with Foidson; pei «rae . . , - ■^'^

2M my; life and work

^8 HOR8C8 COBT, $1,200. WOBEINO LIFE, 5,000 HOtlBB AT i ACSt

FSR Hone, 4,000 acres

4,000 acres at tl,S00, depredatioD of horses, per acre . .80

Feed per horse, 40 cents (100 working days) per acre. .40

Peed per horae, 10 cents a d^ (266 idle days) per acre . .266

Two drivers, two gang plouglu, at $2 each per day, per acre . .50

Cost of plougliing with horses; per acre .... 1.46

At preseot costs, an acre would run about 40 cents only two cents
representing depreciation and repairs. But this does not take ac-
count of the time element. The ploughing is done in about one
fourth the time, with only the physical energy used to steer the
tractor, toughing has become a matter of motoring across a fidd.

Farming in the old style is rapidly fading into a pictur-
esque memory. This does not mean that work is going to
remove from the farm. Work caxmot be removed from
any life that is productive. But power-farming does mean
Uiis — drudgery is going to be removed from the farm.
PowCT-farming is simply taking the burden from flesh and
blood and putting it on steel. We are in the opening years
of power-farming. The motor car wrought a revolution
in modem farm life, not because it was a vehicle, but
because it had power. Farming ought to be something
more than a rural occupation. It ought to be the business
of raising food. And when it does become a business the
actual work of farming the average sort of farm can be
done in twenty-four days a year. The other days can be
given over to other kinds of business. Farming is too
seasonal an occupation to engage all of a man's time.

As a food business, farming will justify itself as a business
if it raises food in sufficient quantity and distributes it
und^ such conditions as will enable every family to have
enough food for its reasonable needs. There could not be
a food trust if we were to raise such overwhelming quanti-
ties of all kinds of food as to make manipulation and ex-

TRACTOR AND POWER FARMING 205

ploitation impossible. The fanner who limits his plant-
ing plays into the hands of the speculators.

And then, perhaps, we shall witness a revival of the
small flour-milling business. It was an evil day when the
village flour mill disappeared. Cooperative farming
will become so developed that we shall see associations
of farmers with their own packing houses in which their
own hogs will be turned into ham and bacon, and with
their own flour mills in which their grain will be turned
into commercial foodstuffs.

Why a steer raised in Texas should be brought to
Chicago and then served in Boston is a question that
cannot be answered as long as all the steers the city needs
could be raised near Boston. The centralization of food
manufacturing industries, entailing enormous costs for
transportation and organization, is too wasteful long to
continue in a developed community.

We shall have as great a development in farming during
the next twenty years as we have had in manufacturing
during the last twenty.

CHAPTER XV
"Why Chabitt?

WHY should there be any necessity for alms-
giving in a civilized community? It is not the
charitable mind to which I object. Heaven forbid
that we should ever grow cold toward a fellow creature in
need. Human sympathy is too fine for the cool, calculat-
ing attitude to take its place. One can name very few
great advances that did not have human sympathy behind
them. It is in order to help people that every notable
service is undertaken.

The trouble is that we have been using this great, fine
motive force for ends too small. If hiunan sympathy
prompts us to feed the hungry, why should it not give
the larger desire — to make hunger in our midst impossible?
If we have sympathy enough for people to help them out
of their troubles, surely we ought to have sympathy
enough to keep them out.

It is easy to give; it is harder to make giving unnecessary.
To make the ^ving unnecessary we must look beyond
the individual to the cause of his misery — ^not hesitating,
of course, to relieve him in the meantime, but not stopping
with mere temporary relief. The difficulty seems to be
in getting to look beyond to the causes. More people
can be moved to help a poor family than can be moved
to give their minds toward the removal of poverty alto-
gether.

I have no patience with professional charity or with
any sort of commercialized humanitarianism. The mo-
ment human helpfulness is systematized, organized.

WHY CHARITY? 207

commercialized, and professionalized, the heart of it
is extinguished, and it becomes a cold and clammy
thing.

Real human helpfulness is never card-catalogued or
advertised. There are more orphan children being cared
for in the private homes of people who love them than
in the institutions. There are more old people being
sheltered by friends than you can find in the old people's
homes. There is more aid by loans from family to family
than by the loan societies. That is, human society on a
humane basis looks out for itself. It is a grave question
how far we ought to countenance the commercialization
of the natural instinct of charity.

Professional charity is not only cold but it hurts more
than it helps. It degrades the recipients 'and drugs their
self-respect. Akin to it is sentimental idealism. The idea
went abroad not so many years ago that ''service" was
something that we should expect to have done for us.
Untold niunbers of people became the recipients of well-
meant "social service." Whole sections of our popula-
tion were coddled into a state of expectant, child-like
helplessness. There grew up a regular profession of
doing things for people, which gave an outlet for a
laudable desire for service, but which contributed nothing
whatever to the self-reliance of the people nor to the
correction of the conditions out of which the supposed
need for such service grew.

Worse than this encouragement of childish wistfulness,
instead of training for self-reliance and self-suflSciency , was
the creation of a feeling of resentment which nearly always
overtakes the objects of charity. People often complain
of the "ingratitude" of those whom they help. Nothing
is more natural. In the first place, precious little of our
so-called charity is ever real charity, offered out o€ a.\iea3N.
full of interest and sympathy. In \iie seconi^. ^axyt, "Qa

208 MY LIFE AND WORK

perscm ever retishes being in a positicm wh«« he is forced
to take favours.

Such "social woric" creates a strained relation — the
re<npient of bounty feels that he has been belittled in the
taking, and it is a question whether the giver should not
also feel that he has been belittled in the giving. Charity
never led to a settled state of affairs. The charitable
system that does not aim to make itself unnecessary is not
performing service. It is simply making a job for itadt
and is an added item to the record of non-production.

Charity becomes unnecessary as those who seem to be
miable to earn livings are taken out of the non-pro-
ductive class and put into the productive. In a previous
chapter I have set out how ^cperiments in our shops have
demonstrated that in sufficiently subdivided industry
there are places which can be filled by the maimed, the
halt, and the blind. Scientific industry need not be a
monster devouring all who come near it. When it is,
then it is not fulfilling its place in life. In and out of in-
dustry there must be jobs that take the fuU strength of
a powerful man; there are other jobs, and plenty of them,
that require more skill than the artisans of the Middle Ages
ever had. The minute subdivision of industry permits
a strong man or a skilled man always to use his strength
or skill. In the old hand industry, a skilled man spent a
good part of his time at unskilled work. That was a waste.
But since in those days every task required both skilled
and unskilled labour to be performed by the <Hie man,
there was httle room for either the man who w^ too stupid
ever to be skilled or the man who did not have the
opportunity to learn a trade.

No mechanic working with only his hands can earn
more than a bare sustenance. He cannot have a surplus.
It has been taken for granted that, coming into old age,
a mechanic must be supported by his children or, if he has

WHY CHAKITY? 209

no chOdren, that he will be a public charge. All of that is
quite unnecessary. The subdivision of industry opens
places that can be filled by practically any one. T^ere
are more places in subdivision industry that can be filled
by blind men than there are blind men. There are more
places that can be filled by cripples than there are cripples.
And in each of these places the man who short-sightedly
might be considered as an object of charity can earn just
as adequate a living as the keenest and most able-bodied.
It is waste to put an able-bodied man in a job that might
be just as well cared for by a cripple. It is a frightful
waste to put the blind at weaving baskets. It is waste to
have convicts breaking stone or picking hemp or doing any
sort of petty, useless task.

A well-conducted jail should not only be self-supporting,
but a man in jail ought to be able to support his family or,
if he has no family, he should be able to accumulate a sum
of money sufficient to put him on his feet when he gets out
of jail. I am not advocating convict labour or the farming
out of men practically as slaves. Such a plan is too
detestable for words. We have greatly overdone the
piisonbusiness, anyway; we be^ at the wrong end. But
as long as we have prisons they can be fitted into the gen-
eral scheme of production so neatly that a prison may be-
come a productive unit working for the relief of the public
and the benefit of the prisoners. I know that there are
laws — foolish laws passed by unthinking men — ^that re-
strict the industrial activities of prisons. Those laws were
passed mostly at the behest of what is called Labour. They
are not for the benefit of the workingman. Increasing
the charges upon a community does not benefit any one
in the community. If the idea of service be kept in mind,
then there is always in every commimity more work to do
than there are men who can do it.

Industry organized for service temoNea VJbs. t«R:^ ^'^t

210 MY LIFE AND WORK'

philanthropy. I^ilanthropy^ no matter how noble its
motive, does not make for self-reliance. We must have
self-reliance. A community is the better for being dis-
contented, for being dissatisfied with what it has. I do not
mean the petty, daily, nagging, gnawing sort of discontoit,
but a broad, courageous sort of discontent which believes
that everything which is done can and ought to be
eventually done better. Industry organized for service—
and the workingman as well as the leader must serve — can
pay wages sufficiently large to permit every family to be
both self-reliant and self-supporting. A philanthropy
that spends its time and money in helping the world to do
more for itself is far better than the sort which merely
gives and thtis encourages idleness. Philanthropy, like
everything else, ought to be productive, and I believe that
it can be. I have personally been experimenting with a
trade school and a hospital to discover if such institutions,
which are commonly regarded as benevolent, cannot be
made to stand on their own feet. I have found that they
can be.

I am not in sympathy with the trade school as it is
commonly organized — ^the boys get only a smattering of
knowledge and they do not learn how to use that knowl-
edge. The trade school should not be a cross between a
technical college and a school; it should be a means of
teaching boys to be productive. If they are put at useless
tasks — at making articles and then throwing them away —
they cannot have the interest or acquire the knowledge
which is their right. And during the period of schooling
the boy is not productive; the schools — unless by charity
— ^make no provision for the support of the boy. Many
boys need support; they must work at the first thing which
comes to hand. They have no chance to pick and choose.

When the boy thus enters life xmtrained, he but adds
to the already great scardty of competent labour. Modem

WHY CHARITY? 211

industry requires a degree of ability and ddU whidb
neither early quitting of school nor long continuance at
school provides. It is true that, in order to retain the
interest of the boy and train him in handicraft, manual
training departments have been introduced in the more
progressive school systems, but even these are confessedly
makeshifts because they only cater to, without satisfying,
the normal boy's creative instincts.

To meet this condition — to fulfill the boy's educational
possibilities and at the same time begin his industrial
training along constructive lines — the Henry Ford Trade
School was incorporated in 1916. We do not use the word
philanthropy in connection with this effort. It grew out of a
desire to aid the boy whose circumstances compelled him
to leave school early. This desire to aid fitted in con-
veniently with the necessity of providing trained tool-
makers in the shops. From the beginning we have held
to three cardinal principles: first, that the boy was to
be kept a boy and not changed into a premature working-
man; second, that the academic training was to go hand
in hand with the industrial instruction; third, that the
boy was to be given a sense of pride and responsibility in
his work by being trained on artides which were to be
used. He works on objects of recognized industrial worth.
The school is incorporated as a private school and is open
to boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. It is
organized on the basis of scholarships and each boy is
awarded an annual cash scholarship of four hundred dollars
at his entrance. This is graduaUy increased to a maximum
of six hundred dollars if his record is satisfactory.

A record of the class and shop work is kept and also of
the industry the boy displays in each. It is the marks In
industry which are used in making subsequent adjust-
ments of his scholarship. In addition to his scholarsbv^
each boy is given a small amount eat^ xo.oxftJck'^^o.OB.'assb^

212 MY LIFE AND WORK

be deposited in his savings account. This thrift fund must
be left in the bank as long as the boy remains in the school
unless he is given permission by the authorities to use it
for an emergency.

One by one the problems of managing the school are
being solved and better ways of accomplishing its objects
are being discovered. At the b^jinning it was the custom
to give the boy one third of the day in class work and two
thirds in shop work. This daily adjustment was found to
be a hindrance to progress, and now the boy takes his
training in blocks of weeks — one week in the class and
two weeks in the shop. Classes are continuous, the
various groups taking their weeks in turn.

The best instructors obtainable are on the staff, and tht
text-book is the Ford plant. It offers more resources for
practical education than most universities. The arith-
metic lessons come in concrete shop problems. No longer
is the boy's mind tortured with Uie mysterious A who can
row four miles while B is rowing two. The actual processes
and actual conditions are exhibited to him — he is tau^t
to observe. Cities are no longer black specks on maps
and continents are not just pages of a book. The shop
shipments to Singapore, the shop receipts of material from
Africa and South America are shown to him, and the
world becomes an inhabited planet instead of a coloured
globe on the teacher's desk. In physics and chemistry
the industrial plant provides a laboratory in which theory
becomes practice and the lesson becomes actual experience.
Suppose the action of a pump b being taught. The teach-
er eiq)Iains the parts and their fimctions, answers ques-
tions, and then they all troop away to the en^e rooms
to see a great pump. The school has a regular factoiy
workshop with the finest equipment. The boys work up
from one machine to the next. They work solely on
parts or articles needed'by the company, but our needs are

WHY CHAHITY? 218

so vast that this list comprehends nearly eveiything.
The inspected work is purchased by the Ford Motor
Company, and, of course, the work that does not pass
inspection is a loss to the school.

The boys who have progressed furthest do fine micro-
meter work, and they do every operation with a clear
understanding of the piu*poses and principles involved.
They repair their own machines; they learn how to take
care of themselves around madiinery; they study pattern-
making and in clean, well-lighted rooms with their instruct-
ors they lay the foundation for successful careers.

When they graduate, places are always open for them in
the shops at good wages. The social and moral well-being
of the boys is given an unobtrusive care. The super-
vi^on is not of authority but of friendly interest. The
home conditions of every boy are pretty well known, and
his tendencies are observed. And no attempt is made
to coddle him. No attempt is made to render him
namby-pamby. One day when two boys came to the
point of a fight, they were not lectured on the wickedness '
of fitting. They were coxmselled to make up their -
differences in a better way, but when, boy-like, they pre-
ferred the more primitive mode of settlement, they were
given gloves and made to fight it out in a comer of the
shop. The only prohibition laid upon them was that "^
they were to finish it there, and not to be caught fighting
outside the shop. The result was a short encounter and—
friendship.

They are handled as boys; their better boyish instincts
are encouraged; and when one sees them in the shops and
classes one cannot easily miss the light of dawiung mastery
in their eyes. They have a sense of "belonging." They
£eel they are doing something worth while. Tley learn
readily and eagerly because they are learning the thAsv^
which every active boy wants to \eani aaii sUaovA. '^VvSaVt

214 MY LIFE AND WORK

is constaDtly asking questions that none of his home'
folks can answer.

Beginning with six boys the school now has two hundred
and is possessed of so practical a system that it may
expand to seven hundred. It began with a deficit, but as
it is one of my basic ideas that anything worth while in
itself can be made self-sustaining, it has so developed its
processes that it is now paying its way.

We have been able to let the boy have his boyhood.
These boys learn to be workmen but they do not foiget
how to be boys. That is of the first importance. Thty
earn from 19 to 35 cents an hour — which is more than they
could earn as boys in the sort of job open to a youngst^-
They can better help support their famiUes by staying
in school than by going out to work. When they are
through, they have a good general education, the begin-
ning of a technical education, and they are so skilled as
workmen that they can earn wages which will give
them the liberty to continue their education if they like.
If they do not want more education, they have at least the
skill to command high wages anywhere. They do not
have to go into our factories; most of them do because
they do not know where better jobs are to be had — wa
want all our jobs to be good for the men who take them.
But there is no string tied to the boys. They have earned
their own way and are under obligations to no one. Thwe
is no charity. The place pays for itself.

The Ford Hospital is being worked out on somewhat
similar lines, but because of the interruption of the war —
when it was given to the Government and became
General Hospital No. 36, housing some fifteen hundred
patients — the work has not yet advanced to the point of
absolutely definite results. I did not deliberately set out
to build this hospit^. It began in 1014 as the Detroit
General Hospital and was de&igoed to be a%cted by

WHY CHARITY? 215

popular subscription. With others, I made a subscrip-
tion, and the building began. Long before the first
bmldings were done, the funds became exhausted and I
was asked to make another subscription. I refused
because I thought that the managers should have known
how much the building was going to cost before they
started. And that sort of a beginning did not give great
confidence as to how the place would be managed after
it was finished. However, I did offer to t^e the whole
hospital, paying back all the subscriptions that had been
made. Iliis was accomplished, and we were going
forward with the work when, on August 1, 1918, the whole
institution was turned ovct to the Government. It was
returned to us in October, 1919, and on the tenth day of
November of the same year the first private patient was
admitted.

The hospital is on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit and
the plot embraces twenty acres, so that there will be ample
room for expansion. It is our thought to extend the
facilities as they justify themselves. The original design
of the hospital has been quite abandoned and we have
endeavoured to work out a new kind of hospital, both in
design and management. There are plenty of hospitals
for the rich. TTiere are plenty of hospitals for the poor.
There are no hospitals for those who can afford to pay
only a moderate amount and yet desire to pay without a
feeling that they are recipients of charity. It has been
taken for granted that a hospital cannot both serve
and be self-supporting — that it has to be either an in-
stitution kept going by private contributions or pass into
the class of private sanitariums managed for profit.
This hospital is designed to be self-supporting — to give
a maximum of service at a minimum of cost and without
the slightest colouring of charity.

In the new buildings that we Uave exesAjei ^«t^. «tfcTi»

218 MY LIFE AND WORK

wards. AH of the rooms are private and each one is pro-
vided with a bath. The rooms — which are in groups trf
twenty-four — are all identical in size, in fittings, and in
fumbhings. There is no choice of rooms. It is planned
that there shaU be no choice of anything within the hos-
pital. Every patient is on an equal footing with evoy
other patient.

It is not at all certain whether hospitals as they are now
managed exist for patients or for doctors. I am not
uiunindful of the large amount of time which a capable
physician or siu-geon gives to charity, but also I am not
convinced that the fees of siu-geons should be r^ulated
according to the wealth of the patient, and I am entirely
fwnvinced that what is known as "professional etiquette"
is a curse to mankind and to the development of medi-
cine. Diagnosis is not veiy much developed. I should
not care to be among the proprietors of a hospital in which
every step had not been taken to insure that the patients
were being treated for what actually was the matter with
them, instead of for something that one doctor had de-
cided they had. Professional etiquette makes it veiy
difficult for a wrong diagnosis to be corrected. The
consulting physician, unless he be a man of great tact,
will not change a diagnosis or a treatment unless the phy-
sician who has called him in is in thorough agreement, and
then if a change be made, it is usually without the knowl-
edge of the patient. There seems to be a notion that a
patient, and especially when in a hospital, becomes the
property of the doctor. A conscientious practitioner
does not exploit the patient. A less conscientious one
does. Many physicians seem to regard the sustaining
of their own diagnoses as of as great moment as the re-
covery of the patient.

It has been an aim of our hospital to cut away from all
of these practices and to put the interest of the patient

WHY CHARITY? 217.

first. Therefore, it is what is known as a "closed"
hospital. All of the physicians and all of the nurses are
employed by the year and they can have no practice
outside of the hospital. Including the internes, twenty-
one physicians and siu-geons are on the staff. These men
have been selected with great care and they are paid
salaries that amount to at least as much as they would
ordinarily earn in successful private practice. They have,
none of them, any financial interest whatsoever in any
patient, and a patient may not be treated by a doctor
from the outside. We gladly acknowledge the place and
the use of the family physician. We do not seek to sup-
plant him. We take the case where he leaves off, and re-
turn the patient as quickly as possible. Our system makes
it undesirable for us to keep patients longer than neces-
sary — we do not need that kind of business. And we will
share with the family physician our knowledge of the case,
but while the patient is in the hospital we assimie full re-
sponsibility. It is "closed" to outside physicians' prac-
tice, though it is not closed to our cooperation with ai^
family physician who desires it.

The admission of a patient is interesting. The incoming
patient is first examined by the senior physician and then
is routed for examination through three, four, or whatever
number of doctors seems necessary. This routing takes
place regardless of what the patient came to the hospital
for, because, as we are gradually learning, it is the com-
plete health rather than a single ailment which is import-
ant. Each of the doctors makes a complete examination,
and each sends in his written findings to the head physician
without any opportunity whatsoever to consult with any of
the other examining physicians. At least three, and some-
times six or seven, absolutely complete and absolutely inde-
pendent diagnoses are thus in the hands of the head of tha
hospital. They constitute a complete TfccotA. ol 'Cofc ^lasfc.

218 MY LIFE AND WORK

These precautions are taken in order to insure, within
the limits of present-day knowledge, a correct diagnosis.

At the present time, there are about six hundred beds
available. Every patient pays according to a fixed
schedule that includes the hospital room, board, medical
uid surgical attendance, and nursing. There are no
extras. There are no private nurses. If a case requires
more attention than the nurses assigned to the wing can
give, then another nurse is put on, but without any
additional expense to the patient. This, however, is
rarely necessary because the patients are grouped accord-
ing to the amount of nursing that they will need. There
may be one nurse for two patients, or one nurse for five
patients, as the type of cases may require. No one nurse
ever has more than seven patients to care for, and because
of the arrangements it is easily possible for a nurse to caie
for seven patients who are not desperately ill. In the
ordinary hospital the niu-ses must make many useless
steps. More of their time is spent in walking than in
caring for the patient. This hospital is designed to save
steps. Each floor Is complete ia itself, and just as in the
factories we have tried to eliminate the necessity for waste
motion, so have we also tried to eliminate waste motion in
the hospital. The charge to patients for a room, nursing,
and medical attendance is $4.50 a day. This will be
lowered as the size of the hospital increases. The charge
for amajor operation is $125. The charge for minor oper-
ations is according to a fixed scale. Ail of the charges
are tentative. The hospital has a cost system just like a
factory. The charges will be regulated to make ends just
meet.

There seems to be no good reason why the experiment
should not be successful. Its success is purely a matter
of management and mathematics. The same kind of
management which permits a factory to give the fullest

WHY CHAKITY? 219

service will permit a hospital to give the fullest service,
and at a price so low as to be within the reach of everyone.
The only difference between hospital and factory account-
ing is that I do not expect the hospital to return a profit; we
do expect it to cover depreciation. The investment in this
hospital to date is about $9,000,000.

If we can get away from charity, the funds that now go
into charitable enterprises can be turned to furthering
production — ^to making goods cheaply and in great plenty.
And then we shall not only be removing the burden of
taxes from the community and freeing men but also we
can be adding to the general wealth. We leave for
private interest too many things we ought to do for our-
selves as a collective interest. We need more construct-
ive thinking in pubUc service. We need a kind of "uni-
versal training" in economic facts. The over-reaching
ambitions of speculative capital, as well as the unreason-
able demands of irresponsible labour, are due to ignorance
of the economic basis of life. Nobody can get more out
of life than life can produce — ^yet nearly everybody thinks
he can. Speculative capital wants more; labour wants
more; the source of raw materia! wants more; and the pur-
chasing public wants more. A family knows that it cannot
live beyond its income; even the children know that. But :,.
the public never seems to learn that it cannot live beyond -'
its income — ^have more than it produces. ^

In clearing out liie need for charity we must keep in
mind not only the economic facts of existence, but also
that lack of knowledge of these facts encourages fear.
Banish fear and we can have self-reliance. Charity is not
present where self-reliance dwells.

Fear is the offspring of a reliance placed on something
outside — on a foreman's good-will, perhaps, on a shop's
prosperity, on a market's steadiness. That is iust
another way of saying that fear is tke poTVvoit cS. ^^ xosa.

220 MY LIFE AKD WOKK

who acknowledges his career to be in the keeping of
earthly circumstances. Fear is the result of the body as-
siuning ascendancy over the soul.

The habit of failure is purely mental and is the mother
of fear. This habit gets itself fixed on men because thej
lack vision. They start out to do something that reaches
from A to Z. At A they fail, at B they stiunble, and at C
they meet with what seems to be an insuperable difficulty.
Hey then cry "Beaten" and throw the whole task down.
They have not even given themselves a chance really to
fail; they have not given their vision a tJiance to be proved
or disproved. They have simply let themselves be beaten
by the natural difficulties that attend every kind of effort.

More men are beaten than fail. It is not wisdom they
need or money, or brilliance, or "pull," but just plain
gristle and bone. This rude, simple, primitive power whicU
we call "stick-to-it-iveness" is the imcrowned king of the
world of endeavour. People are utterly wrong in th^
slant upon things. They see the successes that men have
made and somehow they appear to be easy. But that U
a world away from the facts. It is failure that is easy^
Success is always hard. A man can fail in ease; he can
succeed only by paying dut all that he has and is. It is
this which makes success so pitiable a thing if it be in lines
that are not useful and uplifting.

If a man is in constant fear of the industrial situation he
ought to change his life so as not to be dependent upon it.
There is always the land, and fewer people are on the
land now than ever before. If a man lives in fear of an
employer's favour changing toward him, he ought to
extricate himself from dependence on any employer.
He can become his own boss. It may be that he will be a
poorer boss than the one he leaves, and that his returns
will be much less, but at least he will have rid himself
of the shadow of his pet fear, and that is worth a great

WHY CHARITY? 221

deal in money and position. Better still is for the man to
come through himself and exceed himself by getting rid of
his fears in the midst of the circumstances where his daily
lot is cast. Become a freeman in the place where you first
surrendered your freedom. Win your battle where you ;
lost it. And you will come to see that, although there was
much outside of you that was not right, there was more ■
inside of you that was not right. Thus you will learn
that the wrong inside of you spoils even the right that is |
outside of you.

A man is still the superior being of the earth. Whatever
happens, he is still a man. Business may slacken to-
morrow — he is still a man. He goes through the changes
of circumstances, as he goes through the variations of
temperature — still a man. If he can only get this thought
reborn in him, it opens new wells and mines in his own
being. There is no security outside of himself. There is
no wealth outside of himself. The elimination of fear is
the bringing in of security and supply.

Let every American become steeled against coddling. -
Americans ought to resent coddling. It is a drug. Stand
up and stand out; let weaklings take charity.

CHAPTER XVI

The RAHJtOADS

NOTHING in this country furnishes a better ex-
ample of how a business may be turned from its
fimction of service than do the raiboads. We
have a raihxtad problem, and much learned thought and
discussion have been devoted to the solution of that
problem. Everyone is dissatisfied with the railways.
The public is dissatisfied because both the passenger and
freight rates are too high. The railroad employees are
dissatisfied because they say their wages are too low and
their hoxirs too long. The owners of the railways are
dissatisfied because it is claimed that no adequate return
is realized upon the money invested. All of the contacts
of a properly managed undertaking ought to be satis-
factory. If the public, the employees, and the owners do
not find themselves better oflF because of the undertaking,
then there must be something very wrong indeed with th6
manner in which the undertaking is carried through.

I am entirely without any disposition to pose as a rail-
road authority. There may be railroad authorities, but if
the service as rendered by the American railroad to-day is
the result of accumulated railway knowledge, then I cannot
say that my respect for the usefulness of that knowledge
is at all profound. I have not the slightest doubt in the
world that the active managers of the railways, the men.
who really do the work, are entirely capable of conducting
the railways of the country to the satisfaction of every one,
and I have equally no doubt that these active managers
have, by force of a chain of circiunstances, all but ceased

THE RAILROADS 223

to manage. And right there is the source of most of the
trouble. The men who know railroading have not been
allowed to manage railroads.

In a previous chapter on finance were set forth the
dangers attendant upon the indiscriminate borrowing of
money. It is inevitable that any one who can borrow
freely to cover errors of management will borrow rather
than correct the errors. Our railway managers have been
practically forced to borrow, for since the veiy inception
of the railways they have not been free agents. The
guiding hand of the railway has been, not the railroad man,
but the banker. When railroad credit was high, more
money was to be made out of floating bond issues and
speculating in the securities than out of service to the
public. A very small fraction of the money earned by
the railways has gone back into the rehabilitation of
the properties. When by skilled management the net
revenue became large enough to pay a considerable
dividend upon the stock, then that dividend was used first
by the speculators on the inside and controlling the rail-
road fiscal policy to boom the stock and unload their hold-
ings, and then to float a bond issue on the strength of the
credit gained through the earnings. When the earnings
dropped or were artificially depressed, then the speculat-
ors bought back the stock and in the course of time
staged another advance and unloading. There is scarcely
a railroad in the United States that has not been throu^
one or more receiverships, due to the fact that the financial
interests piled on load after load of securities xmtil the
structures grew topheavy and fell over. Then they got in
on the receiverships, made money at the expense of gullible
security holders, and started Uie same old pyramiding
game all over ag£un.

The natural ally of the banker is the lawyer. S\isii.
games as have been played on tlie laikoaAa W^ft'&'tfcSis^

224 MY LIFE ASD WORK

expert legal advice. Lawy^v, like bankers, know abso-
lutely nothing about business. They imagine that a hm-
ness is properly conducted if it keeps within the law or if
the law can be altered or interpreted to suit the purpose in
hand. Th^ live on rules. The bankers took finance out
of the hands of the managers. They put in lawyers to see
thsA. the railroads violated the law only in l^al fashion, and
thus grew up immense legal departmoits. Instead of ope^
ating under the rules of common sense and according to dr-
cumstances, every railroad had to operate on the advice
of counsel. Rules spread throuf^ every part of the
organization. Then came the avalanche of state and
federal regulations, until to-day we find the railw^s
hog-tied in a mass of rules and r^ulations. yfiih the
lawyers and the financiers on the inside and various state
commissions on the outside, the railway manager has little I
chance. Iliat is the trouble with the railways. Business ,
cannot be conducted by law. '

We have had the opportunity of demonstrating to
ourselves what a freedom from the banker-legal mortm^
means, in our experience with the Detroit, Toledo & Iron-
ton Railway. We bought the railway because its right of
way interfered with some of our improvements on the River
Rouge. We did not buy it as an investment, or as an
adjunct to oiu* industries, or because of its strate^c
position. The extraordinarily good situation of the rail-
way seems to have become universally apparent only since
we bou^t it. That, however, is beside the point. We
bought the railway because it interfered with our plans.
Then we had to do something with it. The only thing
to do was to run it as a productive enterprise, applying
to it exactly the same principles as are applied in every
department of our industries. We have as yet made no
special efforts of any kind and the railway has not been set
up as a demonstration of how every railway should be run.

THE RAILROADS 225

It is true that applying the rule of maximum service
at minimum cost has caused the income of the road to
exceed the outgo — which, for that road, represents a most
unusual condition. It has been represented that the
changes we have made — and remember they have been
made simply as part of the day's work — are peculiarly
revolutionary and quite without application to railway
management in general. Personally, it would seem to
me that our little line does not differ much from the big
lines. In our own work we have always found that, if our
principles ware right, the area over which they were applied
did not matter. The principles that we use in the big
Highland Park plant seem to work equally well in every
plant that we establish. It has never made any difference
with us whether we multiplied what we were doing by five
or five hundred. Size is only a matter of the multiplica-
tion table, anyway.

The Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railway was organized
some twenty-odd years ago and has been reorganized every
few years since then. The last reorganization was in 1914.
The war and the federal control of the railways interrupted
the cycle of reorganization. The road owns 343 miles of
track, has 52 miles of branches, and 45 miles of trackage
rights over other roads. It goes from Detroit almost due
south to Ironton on the Ohio River, thus tapping the West
Virginia coal deposits. It crosses most of the large tnmk
lines and it is a road which, from a general business stand-
point, ought to pay. It has paid. It seems to have paid
the bankers. In 1913 the net capitalization per mile of
road was $105,000. In the next receivership this was cut
down to $47,000 per mile. I do not know how much
money in all has been raised on the strength of the road.
I do know that in the reorganization of 1914 the bond-
holders were assessed and forced to turn into tk<& \x«»ss<n:^
nearly five million dollars — ^wluch, is tiie 8sa.o\}ifi\. 'Cg^"^^'

226 MY LIFE ANJi WORK

paid for the entire road. We paid sixty cents on the dollar
for the outstanding mortgage bonds, although the ruling
price just before the time of purchase was between thirty
and forty cents on the dollar. We paid a dollar a share for
the common stock and five dollars a share for the preferred
stock — which seemed to be a fair price considering that
no interest had ever been paid upon the bonds and a
dividend on the stock was a most remote possibility. The
rolling stock of the road consisted of about seventy loco-
motives, twenty-seven passenger cars, and around twenty-
eight hundred freight cars. All of the rolling stock was in
extremely bad condition and a good part of it would not
run at all. All of the buildings were dirty, unpainted, imd
generally run down. The roadbed was something more
than a streak of rust and something less than a railway.
The repair shops were over-manned and under-machined.
Practically everything connected with operation was coo-
ducted with a maximum of waste. There was, however,
an exceedingly ample executive and administration de-
partment, and of course a legal department. The legal
department alone cost in one month nearly $18,000.

We took over the road in March, 1921. We began to
apply industrial principles. There had been an executive
office in Detroit. We closed that up and put the admiois-
tration into the charge of one man and gave him half of
the flat-topped desk out in the freight office. The legal
department went with the executive offices. There is no
reason for so much litigation in connection with railroad-
ing. Our people quickly settled all the mass of outstand-
ing claims, some of which had been hangiag on for years.
As new claims arise, they are settled at once and on the
facts, so that the legal expense seldom exceeds $200 a
month. All of the unnecessary accounting and red tape
were thrown out and the payroll of the road was reduced
from 2 "700 to 1,650 men.

THE RAILROADS 227

Following our general policy, all titles and offices other
than those required by law were abolished. The ordinary
railway organization is rigid; a message has to go up
through a certain line of authority and no man is ex-
pected to do anything without explicit orders from his
superior. One morning I went out to the road very early
and found a wrecking train with steam up, a crew aboard
and all ready to start. It had been "awaiting orders"
for h^ an hour. We went down and deared the wreck
before the orders came through; that was before the idea
of personal responsibility had soaked in. It was a little
hard to break the "orders" habit; the men at first were
afraid to take responsibility. But as we went on, they
seemed to like the plan more and more and now no man
limits his duties. A man is paid for a day's work of
eight hours and he is expected to work during those eight
hours. If he is an engineer and finishes a run in foiu* hours
then he works at whatever else may be in demand for the
next four hours. If a man works more than eight horn's
he is not paid for overtime — he deducts his overtime from
the next working day or saves it up and gets a whole day
off with pay. Our eight-hour day is a day of eight hours
and not a basis for computing pay.

The minimum wage is six dollars a day. There are no
extra men. We have cut down in the offices, in the shops,
and on the roads. In one shop 20 men are now doing
more work than 59 did before. Not long ago one of our
tracJc gangs, consisting of a foreman and 15 men, was
working beside a parallel road on which was a gang of
40 men doing exactly the same sort of track repairing and
ballasting. In five days our gang did two telegraph poles
more than the competing gang!

The road is being rehabilitated; nearly the whole trade
has been reballasted and many miles of new rails b».N«-
been laid. The locomotives and rofim^ a\.c«5fi. ai^ \ve(»-^

228 MY LIFE AND WORK

overhauled in our own shops and at a very sU^t expenae.
We found that the supplies bought previously were of poot
quality or unfitted for the use; we are saving money on
supplies by buying better qualities and seeing that nothing
is wasted. The men seem entirely willing to cooperate
in saving. They do not discard that which might be
used. We ask a man, "What can you get out of an en-
gine? and he answers with an economy record. And
we are not pouring in great amounts of mon^. Every-
thing is being done out of earnings. That is our pol-
ipy.

The trains must go through and on time. The time
of freight movements has been cut down about two thirds.
A car on a siding is not just a car on a siding. It is
a great big question mark. Someone has to know why
it is there. It used to take 8 or 9 days to get freight
through to Philadelphia or New York; now it takes three
and a half days. The organization is serving.

All sorts of explanations are put forward, of why a
deficit was turned into a surplus. I am told that it is all
due to diverting the freight of the Ford industries. If we
had diverted all of our business to this road, that would not
explain why we manage at so much lower an operating
cost than before. We are routing as much as we can of
our own business over the road, but only because we there
get the best service. For years past we had been trying to
send freight over this road because it was conveniently
located, but we had never been able to use it to any extent
because of the delayed deliveries. We could not coimt
on a shipment to within five or six weeks; that tied
up too much money and also broke into our production
schedule. There was no reason why the road should not
have had a schedule; but it did not. The delays became
legal matters to be taken up in due legal course; that is
not the way of business. Vie \]ui^ that a delay is a

THE RAILROADS 229

critidsm of our work and is something at once to be
investigated. That is business.

The railroads in general have broken down, and if the
fonner conduct of the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton is any
ditmon of management in general there is no reason in
the world why they should not have broken down. Too
many railroads are run, not from the offices of practical
men, but from banking offices, and the principles of pro-
cedure, the whole outlook, are financial — ^not transporta-
tional, but financial. There has been a breakdown simply
because more attention has been paid to railroads as
factors in the stock market than as servants of the people.
Outworn ideas have been retained, development has been
practically stopped, and railroad men with vision have not
been set free to grow.

Will a billion dollars solve that sort of trouble? No, a
billion dollars will only make the difficulty one billicm
dollars worse. The purpose of the billion is simply to'
continue the present methods of railroad managemoit,
and it is because of the present methods that we have any
railroad difficulties at all.

The mistaken and foolish things we did years ago are
just overtaking us. At the begiiming of railway trans-
portation in the United States, the people had to be taught
its use, just as they had to be taught the use of the tele-
phone. Also, the new railroads had to make business in
order to keep themselves solvent. And because railway
financing began in one of the rottenest periods of our busi-
ness histoiy, a nxmiber of practices were estabhshed as
precedents which have influenced railway work ever since.
One of the first things the railways did was to throttle all
other methods of transportation. There was the be^n-
ning of a splendid canal system in this coimtry and a great
movement for canalization was at its hei^t. The ta\L-
road companies bought out the cai^\ cotav®^'^ «ty^^s^.,

232 MY LIFE AND WORK x

In commodities like coal it is nscessaxy that tlu^ be
hauled from where they are to where they are needed
The same is true of the raw materials of industry — ^they
must be hauled from the place where nature has stored
them to the place where there are people ready to voA
them. And as these raw materials are not often found
assembled in one section, a considerable amount of trans-
portation to a central assembling place is necessary. The
coai comes from one section, the copper from another, the
iron from another, the wood from another — ^they must all
be brought together.

But wherever it is possible a policy of decentral-
ization ought to be adopted. We need, instead of
mammoth flour mills, a multitude of smaller mjlla dis*
tributed through all the sections where grain is grown.
Wherever it is possible, the section that produces the raw
material ought to produce also the finished product.
Grain should be ground to flour where it is grown. A hog-
growing country should not export hogs, but pork, hams,
and bacon. The cotton mills ought to be near the cotton
flelds. This is not a revolutionary idea. In a sense it b
a reactionary one. It does not suggest anything new; it
suggests something that is very old. This is the way the
country did things before we feU into the habit of carting
everything around a few thousand mUes and adding the
cartage to the consumer's bill. Our communities ought
to be more complete in themselves. They ouj^t not to
be unnecessarily dependent on railway transportation.
Out of what they produce they should supply their own
needs and ship the surplus. And how can they do this
unless they have the means of taking their raw materials,
like grain and cattle, and changing them into finished
products? If private enterprise does not yield these
means, the cooperation of farmers can. The <^ief in-
justice sustained by the iarmftt to-da-v ia that, being the

THE RAILROADS 233

greatest producer, he is prevented from being also the
greatest merchandiser, because he is compelled to sell to
those who put his products into merchantable form. If
he could change his grain into flour, his cattle into beef,
and his hogs into hams and bacon, not only would he re-
ceive the fuller profit of his product, but he would render
his near-by communities more independent of railway
exigencies, and thereby improve the transportation system
by reheving it of the burden of his unfinished product.
The thing is not only reasonable and practicable, but it is
becoming absolutely necessary. More than that, it is
being done in many places. But it will not register its
full effect on the transportation situation and upon the
cost of Uving until it is done more widely and in more
kinds of materials.

It is one of nature's compensations to withdraw pros-
perity from the business which does not serve.

We have found that on the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton
we could, following our universal poUcy, reduce our rates
and get more business. We made some cuts, but the In-
terstate Commerce Commission refused to allow them!
Under such conditions why discuss the railroads as a
business? Or as a service?

• , . - ^v . ,■. ,;^

CHAPTER XVn
Things in General

NO MAN exceeds Thomas A. Edison in broad vision
and understanding. I met him first many yean
ago when I was with the Detroit Edison Company
— probably about 1887 or thereabouts. The electrical
men held a convention at Atlantic City, and Edison, as the
leader in electrical science, made an address. I was then
working on my gasoline engine, and most people, includlDg
all of my associates in the electrical company, had taken
pains to tell me that time spent on a gasoline engine was
time wasted — that the power of the future was to be elec-
tricity. These criticisms had not made any impression on
me. I was working ahead with all my mi^t. But being
in the same room with Edison suggested to me that it
would be a good idea to find out if the master of electricity
thought it was going to be the only power in the future.
So, after Mr. Edison had finished his address, I managed to
catch him alone for a moment. I told him what I was
working on.

At once he was interested. He is interested in every
search for new knowledge. And then I asked him if he
thought that there was a future for the internal com-
bustion engine. He answered something in this fash-
ion:

"Yes, there is a big future for any light-weight engine
that can develop a high horsepower and be self-contained.
No one kind of motive power is ever going to do all the
work of the country. We do not know what electricity
can do, but I take for granted that it cannot do everything

THE RAILROADS 23^

greatest producer, he is prevented from being also the
greatest merchandiser, because he is compelled to sell to
those who put his products into merchantable form. If
he could change his grain into flour, his cattle into beef,
and his hogs into hams and bacon, not only would he re-
ceive the fuller profit of his product, but he would render
his near-by conmiunities more independent of railway
exigencies, and thereby improve the transportation system
by relieving it of the burden of his unfinished product.
The thing is not only reasonable and practicable, but it is
becoming absolutely necessary. More than that, it is
being done in many places. But it will not register its
full effect on the transportation situation and upon the
cost of living imtil it is done more widely and in more
kinds of materials.

It is one of nature's compensations to withdraw pros-
perity from the business which does not serve.

We have found that on the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton
we could, following our universal policy, reduce oiu* rates
and get more business. We made some cuts, but the In-
terstate Commerce Commission refused to allow them!
Under such conditions why discuss the railroads as a
business? Or as a service?

CHAPTER XVU

Things in General

NO MAN exceeds Thomas A. Edison in broad vision
and understanding. I met him first many years
ago when I was with the Detroit Edison Compaoy
— ^probably about 1887 or thereabouts. The electrical
men held a convention at Atlantic City, and Edison, as the
leader in electrical science, made an address. I was then
working on my gasoline engine, and most people, including
all of my associates in the electrical company, had taken
pains to tell me tibat time spent on a gasoline engine was
time wasted — ^that the power of the future was to be elec-
tricity. These criticisms had not made any impression on
me. I was working ahead with all my might. But being
in the same room with Edison suggested to me that it
would be a good idea to find out if the master of electricity
thought it was going to be the only power in the future.
So, after Mr. Edison had finished his address, I managed to
catch him alone for a moment. I told him what I was
working on.

At once he was interested. He is interested in every
search for new knowledge. And then I asked him if he
thought that there was a future for the internal com-
bustion engine. He answered something in this fash-
ion:

"Yes, there is a big future for any light-weight engine
that can develop a high horsepower and be self-contained.
No one kind of motive power is ever going to do all the
work of the country. We do not know what electricity
can do, but I take for granted that it cannot do everything

9U

THINGS IN GENERAL 236

Keep on with your engine. If you can get what you are
after, I can see a great future."

That is characteristic of Edison. He was the central
figure in the electrical industry, which was then young and
enthusiastic. The rank and file of the electrical men
could see nothing ahead but electricity, but their leader
could see with crystal clearness that no one power could
do all the work of the country. I suppose that is why he
was the leader.

Such was my first meeting with Edison. I did not see
him again until many years after — ^until our motor had
been developed and was in production. He remembered
perfectly our first meeting. Since then we have seen
each other often. He is one of my closest friends, and we
together have swapped many an idea.

His knowledge is almost xmiversal. He is mterested in
every conceivable subject and he recognizes no limita-
tions. He believes that all things are possible. At the
same time he keeps his feet on the ground. He goes
forward step by step. He regards "impossible" as a de-
scription for that which we have not at the moment the
knowledge to achieve. He knows that as we amass knowl-
edge we build the power to overcome the impossible.
That is the rational way of doing the "impossible." The
irrational way is to make the attempt without the toil of
accumulating knowledge. Edison is really the world's
greatest scientist. In addition, he has the constructive
and managerial sense. He has not only had visions, but
he has made them realities. He has had management of
men and affairs to a degree unusual in an inventor, who
is almost always considered visionary. Although not pri-
marily a business man, he has made himself one by sheer
necessity. Edison could have done anything to which
he had turned his mind. He sees through things — and
there is a great lack of seeing t/irough» WA&'^ .

236 MY LIFE AND WORK

John Burrou^s was another of those who honoured
with their friendship. I,too,like birds. I like the outdoon
I Uke to walk across country and jiunp fences. We haw
five hundred bird houses on the farm. We call them out
bird hotels, and one of them, the Hotel Fontchartrain— a
martin house — ^has seventy-six apartments. All winl«|
long we have wire baskets of food hanging about on the
trees and then there is a big basin in which the water is
kept from freezing by an electric heater. Summer and
winter, food, drink, and shelter are on hand for the birds.
We have hatched pheasants and quail in incubaton
and then turned them over to electric brooders. We
have all kinds of bird houses and nests. The sparrovs,
who are great abusers of hospitality, insist that their joesU
be immovable — that they do not sway in the wind; tLe
wrens like swaying nests. So we mounted a number of
wren boxes on strips of spring steel so that they would
sway in the wind. The wrens liked the idea and the spar
rows did not, so we have been able to have the wrens nest
in peace. In summer we leave cherries on the trees and
strawberries open in the beds, and I think that we have
not only more but also more difFerent kinds of bird callers
than anywhere else in the northern states. John Bui^
rou^s said he thou^t we had, and one day when he was
staying at our place he came across a bird that he had
never seen before.

About ten years ago we imported a great number of
birds from abroad — ^yellow-hammers, chaffinches, green
finches, red pales, twites, bullfinches, jays, linnets, larks —
some five hundred of them. They stayed aroimd a while,
but where they are now I do not know. I shall not im-
port any more. Birds are entitled to live where they want
to live.

Birds are the best of companions. We need them for
their beauty and their companionship, and also we need

THINGS IN GENERAL 287

them for the strictly economic reason that they destroy
harmful insects. The only time I ever used the Ford or-
ganization to influence legislation was on behalf of the
birds, and I think the end justified the means. The
Weeks-McLean Bird Bill, providing for bird sanctuaries
for oiu- migratory birds, had been hanging in Congress with
every likelihood of dying a natural death. Its immediate
sponsors could not arouse much interest among the Con-
gressmen. Birds do not vote. We got behind that bill
and we asked each of our six thousand dealers to wire to
his representative in Congress. It began to become ap-
parent that birds might have votes; the bill went through.
Our organization has never been used for any political .
purpose and never will be. We assume that om: people
have a right to their own preferences.

To get back to John Burroughs. Of course I knew who
he was and I had read nearly everytibing he had written,
but I had never thought of meeting him until some years
ago when he developed a grudge against modem prog-
ress. He detested money and especially he detested the
power which money gives to vulgar people to despoil the
lovely countryside. He grew to disHke the industry out of
whic^ money is made. He disliked the noise of factor-
ies and railways. He criticized iodustrial progress, and
he declared that the automobile was going to kill the ap-
preciation of nature. I fundamentally disagreed with
him. I thou^t that his emotions had taken him on the
wrong tack and so I sent him an automobile with the re-
quest that he try it out and discover for himself whether
it would not help him to know nature better. That auto-
mobile — and it took him some time to learn how to man-
age it himself — completely changed his point of view. He
found that it helped him to see more, and from the time of
getting it. he made nearly all of his bird-himting e^qpedi-
tions behind the steering wheel. He learned that instead

238 MY LIFE AND WORK

of having to confine himself to a few miles around Slab-
sides, the whole countryside was open to him.

Out of that automobile grew our friendship, and it was»
fine one. No man could help being the better for loioviiig
John Burroughs. He was not a professional naturalist,
nor did he make sentiment do for hard research. It is
easy to grow sentimental out of doors; it is hard to pursue
the truth about a bird as one would pursue a mechanical
principle. But John Burroughs did that, and as a result
the observations he set down were very largely accu-
rate. He was impatient with men who were not accurate
in their observations of natiu^ life. John Burroughs first
loved nature for its own sake; It was not merely bis stock
of material as a professional writer. He loved it before
he wrote about it.

Late in life he turned philosopher. His philosophy was
not so much a philosophy of nature as it was a natural
philosophy — ^the long, serene thou^ts of a man who had
Uved in the tranquil spirit of the trees. He was not pagan;
he was not pantheist; but he did not much divide between
nature and human nature, nor between human nature and
divine. John Burroughs lived a wholesome life. He was
fortunate to have as his home the farm on which he was
bom. Through long years his surroundings were those
which made for quietness of mind. He loved the woods
and he made dusty-minded city people love them, too — ^he
helped them see what he saw. He did not make mudi
beyond a living. He could have done so, perhaps, but
that was not his aim. Like another American naturalist,
his occupation could have been described as inspector of
birds' nests and hillside paths. Of course, that does not
pay in dollars and cents.

When he had passed the three score and ten he changed
his views on industry. Perhaps I had something to do with
that. He came to see that the whole world could not live

THINGS IN GENERAL 239

by hunting birds' nests. At one time in his life, he had a
grudge against all modem progress, especially where it was
* associated with the burning of coal and the noise of traffic.
Perhaps that was as near to hterary affectation as he ever
came. Wordsworth disliked railways too, and Thoreau
said that he could see more of the country by walking.
Perhaps it was influences such as these which bent John,
Burrou^s for a time against industrial progress. But only
for a time. He came to see that it was fortunate for him
that others* tastes ran in other channels, just as it was fortu-
nate for the world that his taste ran in its own channel.
There has been no observable development in the method of
makmg birds' nests since the beginning of recorded observa-
tion, but that was hardly a reason why human beings ^ould
not prefer modem sanitary homes to cave dwellings. This
was a part of John Burroughs's sanity — ^he was not afraid to
change his views. He was a lover of Nature, not her dupe.
In the coxu-se of time he came to value and approve modem
devices, and though this by itself is an interesting fact, it is
not so interesting as the fact that he made this change after
he was seventy years old. John Burroughs was never too
old to change. He kept growing to the last. The man who
is too set to change is dead already. The funeral is a mere
detaD.

If he talked more of one person than another, it was
Emerson. Not only did he know Emerson by heart as an
author, but he knew him by heart as a spirit. He taught
me to know Emerson. He had so saturated himself vrith
Emerson that at one time he thought as he did and even
fell into his mode of expression. But afterward he found
his own way — which for him was better.

There was no sadness in John Biuroughs's death. When
the grain Hes brown and ripe under the harvest sun, and
the harvesters are busy binding it into sheaves, there is no
sadness for the grain. It has ripened and has fulfilled \t&

MY LIFE AND WORK

t it was ftJf )
i almost til \
hey burieiil

tenn, and so had John Burroughs. With him

ripeness and harvest, not decay. He worked

the end. His plans ran beyond the end. They

him amid the scenes he loved, and it was his eighty-fourtk

birthday. Those scenes will be preserved as he loved

them.

John Burroughs, Edison, and I with Harvey S. Firestone
made several vagabond trips together. We went in
motor caravans and slept under canvas. Once we gypsied
through the Adirondacks and again through the Alleglua-
ies, heading southward. The trips were good fun — except
that they began to attract too much attention.

To-day I am more opposed to war than ever I was, anil
think the people of the world know — even if the politicians
do not — ^that war never settles anything. It was war th^
made the orderly and profitable processes of the world
what they are to-day — a loose, disjointed mass. Of
course, some men get rich out of war; others get poor.
But the men who get rich are not those who fought or who
really helped behind the lines. No patriot makes money
out of war. No man with true patriotism could make
money out of war — out of the sacrifice of other men's lives.
Until the soldier makes money by fighting, until mothers
make money by giving their sons to death — not until then
should any citizen make money out of providing his coun-
try with the means to preserve its life.

If wars are to continue, it will be harder and harder for
the upright business man to regard war as a le^timate
means of high and speedy profits. War fortunes are los-
ing caste every day. Even greed will some day hesitate
before the overwhelming unpopularity and opposition
which will meet the war profiteer. Business should be
on the side of peace, because peace is business's best asset

THINGS IN GENERAL 241

And, by the way, was invaitive genius ever so sterile as it
was during the war?

An impartial investigation of the last war, of what pre-
ceded it and what has come out of it, would show b^ond a
doubt that there is in the world a group of men with vast
powers of control, that prefers to remain imknown, that
does not seek office or any of the tokens of power, that
belongs to no nation whatever but is international- — a
force that uses every government, every widespread busi-
ness organization, every agency of publicity, every re-
source of national psychology, to throw the world into a
panic for the sake of getting still more power over the
world. An old gambling trick used to be for the gambler
to ciy "Police!" when a lot of money was on the table,
and, in the panic that followed, to seize the money and run
off with it. There is a power within the world which
cries "War!" and in the confusion of the nations, the un-
restrained sacrifice which people make for safety and peace
runs off with the spoils of the panic.

The point to keep in mind is that, though we won the
military contest, the world has not yet quite succeeded in
Avinning a complete victoiy over the promoters of war.
We ought not to forget that wars are a pxu^ly manu-
factured evil and are made according to a definite tech-
nique. A campaign for war is made upon as definite lines
as a campaign for any other purpose. First, the people
are worked upon. By clever tales the people's suspicions
are aroused toward the nation against whom war is desired .
Make the nation suspicious; make the other nation sus-
picious. All you need for this is a few agents with some
cleverness and no conscience and a press whose interest is
locked up with the interests that will be benefited by war.
Then the "overt act" will soon appear. It is no trick at
all to get an "overt act" once you work the hatred of two
nations up to the proper pitch.

242 MY LIFE AND WORK

There were men in every country who were glad to set
the World War begin and sorry to see it stop. Hundreds
of American fortmies date from the Civil War; thousands
of new fortimes date from the World War. Nobody can
deny that war is a profitable business for those who like
that kind of money. Wu: is an orgy of money, just as it
is an orgy of blood.

And we should not so easily be led into war if we coo-
sidered what it is that makes a nation really great. It
is not the amount of trade that makes a nation great
The creation of private fortunes, like the creation of an
autocracy, does not make any country great. Nor does
the mere change of an agricultural population into a fac-
tory population. A country becomes great when, by the
wise development of Its resources and the skill of its
people, property is widely and fairly distributed.

Foreign trade is full of delusions. We ought to wisb
for every nation as large a degree of self-support as pos-
sible. Instead of wishing to keep them dependent on us
for what we manufacture, we should wish them to leam
to manufacture themselves and build up a solidly foxmded
civilization. When every nation learns to produce the
things which it can produce, we shall be able to get down to
a basis of serving each other along those ^)ecial lines in
which there can be no competition. The North Temper-
ate Zone will never be able to compete with the tropics in
the special products of the tropics. Our country will
never be a competitor with the Orient in the production
of tea, nor with the South in the production of rubber.

A large proportion of our foreign trade is based on the
backwardness of our foreign customers. Selfishness is a
motive that would preserve that backwardness. Human-
ity is a motive that would help the backward nations to a
self-supporting basis. Take Mexico, for example. We have
heard a great deal about the "development" of Mexico.

THINGS IN GENEKAL 24d

Exploitation is the word that ought instead to be used.
When its rich natural resources are exploited for the in-
crease of the private fortunes of foreign capitalists, tiiat
is not development, it is ravishment. You can never
develop Mexico until you develop the Mexican. And yet
how much of the "development" of Mexico by foreign
exploiters ever took account of the development of its
people? The Mexican peon has been regarded as mere
fuel for the foreign money-makers. Foreign trade has
been his degradation.

Short-sighted people are afr^d of such counsel. Tbey
say: "What would become of our foreign trade?"

When the natives of Africa begin raising their own cot-
ton and the natives of Russia begin maJdng their own
fanning implements and the natives of China begin sup-
plying their own wants, it will make a difference, to be
sure, but does any thoughtful man ima^e that the world
can long continue on the present basis of a few nations
supplying the needs of the world? We must think in
terms of what the world will be when civilization becomes
general, when all the peoples have learned to help them-
selves.

When a country goes mad about foreign trade it
usually depends on other countries for its raw material,
turns its population into factory fodder, creates a private
rich class, and lets its own immediate interest lie neglected.
Here in the United States we have enough work to do
developing our own country to relieve us of the necessity
of looking for foreign trade for a long time. We have
agricidture enough to feed us while we are doing it, and
money enough to carry the job through. Is there any-
thing more stupid than the United States standing idle
because Japan or France or any other country has not
sent us an order when there is a hundred-year job await--
ing us in developing our. QWX. CPUjAc^t

244 MY LIFE AND WORK

Commerce began in service. Men carried off their 8a^ .
plus to people who had none. The country that raised I
com carried it to the country that could raise no con. I
The Iiunber country brought wood to the treeless pUun. I
The vine country brought fruit to cold northern climes. I
llie pasture country brought meat to the grassless region. \
It was all service. When all the peoples of the world be-
come developed in the art of self-support, conuuerce wiD
get back to that basis. Business will once more become
service. There will be no competition, because the basis
of competition will have vanished. The varied peoples
will develop skills which will be in the nature of monopo-
Kes and not competitive. From the beginning, the races
have exhibited distinct strains of genius: this one for
government; another for colonization; another for the sea;
another for art and music; another for agriculture; an-
other for business, and so on. Lincoln said that this
nation could not survive half-slave and half-free. The
human race cannot forever exist half-exploiter and half-
exploited. Until we become buyers and sellers alike, pro-
ducers and consumers alike, keeping the balance not for
profit but for service, we are going to have topsy-turvy
conditions.

France has something to give the world of which no
competition can cheat her. So has Italy. So has Russia.
So have the coimtries of South America. So has Japan.
So has Britain. So has the United States. The sooner
we get back to a basis of natural specialties and drop this
free-for-all system of grab, the sooner we shall be sure of
international self-respect — and international peace. Try-
ing to take the trade of the world can promote war. It
cannot promote prosperity. Some day even the inter-
national bankers will learn this.

I have never been able to discover any honourable rea-
sons for the beginning of the World War. It seemis to

THINGS IN GENERAL 245

have grown out of a very complicated situation created
largely by those who thought they could profit by war. I
believed, on the information that was given to me in 1916,
that some of the nations were anxious for peace and would
welcome a demonstration for peace. It was in the hope
that this was true that I financed the expedition to Stock-
holm in what has since been called the "Peace Ship." I
do not regret the attempt. The mere fact that it failed is
not, to me, conclusive proof that it was not worth trying.
We learn more from our failures than from our successes.
What I learned on that trip was worth the time and the
money expended. I do not now know whether the infor-
mation as conveyed to me was true or false. I do not care.
But I think everyone will agree that if it had been possible
to end the war in 1916 the world would be better ofiF than
it is to-day.

For the victors wasted themselves in winning, and the
vanquished in resisting. Nobody got an advantage,
honourable or dishonourable, out of that war. I had hoped,
finally, when the United States entered the war, that it
might be a war to end wars, but now I know that wars do
not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large con-
flagration does away with the fire hazard. When our
country entered the war, it became the duty of every
citizen to do his utmost toward seeing through to the end
that which we had undertaken. I believe that it is the
duty of the man who opposes war to oppose going to war
up until the time of its actual declaration.

My opposition to war is not based upon pacifist or non-
resistant principles. It may be that the present state of
civilization is such that certain international questions
cannot be discussed; it may be that they have to be fought
out. But the fighting never settles the question. It only
gets the participants around to a frame of mind wheK.
they will agree to discuss what tkey w«tft ^i^^ojwt ^ws*^-

246 MY LIFE AND WORK

Once we were in the war, every facility of the Ford in-
jdustries was put at the disposal of the Government. We
had, up to the time of the declaration of war, absolutely
refused to take war orders from the foreign belligerents.
It is entirely out of keeping with the principles of our busi-
ness to disturb the routine of our production unless in an
emergency. It is at variance with our human principles
to aid either side in a war in which our country was not
involved. These principles had no application, once the
United States entered the war. From April, 1917, until
November, 1918, our factory worked practically exdu-
sively for the Government. Of course we made cars and
parts and special delivery trucks and ambulances as a part
of our general production, but we also made many oth»
articles that were more or less new to us. We made 2J-
ton and 6-ton trucks. We made Liberty motors in great
quantities, aero cyUnders, 1.55 Mm. and 4.7 Mm. caissons.
We made listening devices, steel helmets (both at High-
land Park and Philadelphia), and Eagle Boats, and we
did a large amoimt of experimental work on armour plate,
compensators, and body armour. For the Eagle Boats
we put up a special plant on the River Rouge site. These
boats were designed to combat the submarines. They were
204 feet long, made of steel, and one of the conditions pre-
cedent to their building was that their construction should
not interfere with any other line of war production and
also that they be delivered quickly. The design was
worked out by the Navy Department. On December 22,
1917, I offered to build the boats for the Navy. The
discussion terminated on January 15, 1918, when the
Navy Department awarded the contract to the Ford
Company. On July 11th, the first completed boat was
launched. We made both the hulls and the en^nes, and
not a forging or a rolled beam entered into the construction
'f other than the »^ne. We atamoed the hulls entirely

THINGS IN GENERAL 247

out of sheet steel. TTiey were built indoors. In four
months we ran up a building at the River Rouge a third of
a mile long, 350 feet wide, and 100 feet high, covering more
than thirteen acres. These boats were not built by marine
engineers. They were built simply by applying our pro-
duction principles to a new product.

VfiXh the Armistice, we at once drc^ped the war and
went back to peace.

An able man is a man who can do things, and his ability
to do things is dependent on what he has in him. What
he has in him depends on what he started with and what
he has done to increase and discipline it.

An educated man is not one whose memory is trained to
carry a few dates in history — ^he is one who can accompUsh
things. A man who cannot think is not an educated man
however many college degrees he may have acquired. ^
Thinking is the hardest work any one can do — which is " '
probably the reason why we have so few thinkers. There ■
are two extremes to be avoided : one is the attitude of con- . '
tempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery
of assuming that marching throng an educational system
is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity. You cannot
learn in any school what the world is going to do next year,
but you can learn some of the ^ings which the world has
tried to do in former years, and where it failed and where it
succeeded. If education consisted in warning the young
student away from some of the false theories on which men
have tried to build, so that he may be saved the loss of the
time in finding out by bitter experience, its good would be
unquestioned. An education which consists of signposts
indicating the failxu* and the fallacies of the past doubt-
less would be very useful. It is not education yisl \a
possess the theories of a lot ot pTdiessots. ^-^essaia^'so-^a

248 MY LIFE AND WORK

very interesting, and sometimes profitable, but it is not'
education. To be learned in science to-day is merel; to
be aware of a hundred theories that have not been proved
And not to know what those theories are is to be "un-
educated," "ignorant," and so forth. If knowledge d
guesses is learning, then one may become learned by lie
simple expedient of making his own guesses. And by tk
same token he can dub the rest of the world "ignorant"
because it does not know what his guesses are. Bat
the best that education can do for a man is to put him in
possession of his powers, give him control of the tools wili
which destiny has endowed him, and teach him how to
think. The college renders its best service as an intellec-
tual gymnasitun, in which mental muscle is developed and
the student strengthened to do what he can. To say,
however, that mental gymnastics can be had only in
college is not true, as every educator knows. A man's real
education be^ns after he has left school. True education
is gained through the discipline of life.

There are many kinds of knowledge, and it depends on
what crowd you happen to be in, or how the fashions of
the day happen to run, which kind of knowledge is most
respected at the moment. There are fashions in knowl-
edge, just as there are in everything else. When some
of us were lads, knowledge used to be hmited to the Bible.
There were certain men in the neighbourhood who knew
the Book thoroughly, and they were looked up to and
respected. BibUcal knowledge was hi^y valued then.
But nowadays it is doubtful whether deep acquaintance
with the Bible would be sufficient to win a man a name for
learning.

Knowledge, to my mind, is something that in the past
somebody knew and left in a form which enables all
who will to obtain it. If a man is bom with normal
human faculties, if he is ecjioipped with enough abiHiy to

THINGS IN GENERAL 249

use the tools which we call " letters ' ' in reading or writing,
there is no knowledge within the possession of the race , .
that he cannot have — ^if he wants it! The only reason!
why every man does not know everything that the human
mind has ever learned is that no one has ever yet found .
it worth while to know that much. Men satisfy their ' ■
minds more by finding out things for themselves than by
heaping together the things which somebody else has
found out. You can go out and gather knowledge all
your life, and with all your gathering you will not catch
up even with your own times. You may fill your head
with all the "facts" of all the ages, and your head may
be just an overloaded fact-bos when you get throu^.
The point is this: Great piles of knowledge in the head arei
not the same as mental activity. A man may be very
learned and very useless. And then again, a man may be
imleamed and very useful.

The object of education is not to fill a man's mind with
facts; it is to teach him how to use his mind in thinking.
And it often happens that a man can think better if he is
not hampered by the knowledge of the past.

It is a very human tendency to think that what man-
kind does not yet know no one can learn. And yet it must
be perfectly clear to everyone that the past learning of
mankind cannot be allowed to hinder our future learning.
Mankind has not gone so very far when you measure its
progress against the knowledge that is yet to be gained — ■
the secrets that are yet to be learned.

One good way to hinder progress is to fill a man's head
with all the learning of the past; it makes him feel that
because his head is full, there is nothing more to leam.
Merely gathering knowledge may become the most useless
work a man can do. What can you do to help and heal
the world? That is the educational test. If a man. cass.
hold up his own end, he counts ioi one. "tt V'a «»si."\i^^

250 MY LIFE AND WORK

ten or a hundred or a thousand other men hold up theii
ends, he counts for more. He may be quite rusty on
many things that inhabit the realm of print, but he is a
learned man just the same. When a man is master of his
own sphere, whatever it may be, he h^ won his deigree—
he has entered the reahn of wisdom.

The work which we describe as Studies in the Jewish
Question, and which is variously described by antagonists
as "the Jewish campaign," "the attack on the Jews,"
"the anti-Semitic pogrom," and so forth, needs no ex-
planation to those who have followed it. Its motives and
purposes must be judged by the work itself. It is offered
as a contribution to a question which deeply affects the
country, a question which is racial at its source, and
which concerns influences and ideals rather than persons.
Our statements must be judged by candid readers who are
intelligent enough to lay our words alongside life as they
are able to observe it. If our word and their observation
agree, the case is made. It is perfectly silly to begin to
damn us before it has been shown that our statements are
baseless or reckless. The first item to be considered is the
truth of what we have set forth. And that is precisely
the item which our critics choose to evade.

Readers of our articles will see at once that we are not
actuated by any kind of prejudice, except it may be a prej-
.udice in favour of the principles which have made our
civilization. 'There had been observed in this country
certain streams of influence which were causing a marked
deterioration in our literature, amusements, and social
conduct; business was departing from its old-time sub-
stantial soundness; a general letting down of standards
was felt everywhere. It was not the robust coarseness of
white man, the rude mde^c^jc:^, %K<f « of Shakespeare's

THINGS IN GENERAL 251

characters, but a nasty Orientalism which has insidiously
affected every channel of expression — and to such an ex- »i(*
tent that it was time to challenge it. TTie fact that these
influences are all traceable to one racial source is a fact to
be reckoned with, not by us only, but by the intelligeait
people of the race in questio^ It Is entirely creditable to
them that steps have been taken by them to remove their
protection from the more flagrant violators of American
hospitality, but there is still room to discard outworn
ideas of racial superiority maintained by economic or in-
tellectually subversive warfare upon Christian society.

Our work does not pretend to say the last word on the
Jew in America. It says only the word whidi describes
his obvious present impress on the country. When that
impress is changed, the report of it can be changed. (For
the present, then, the question is wholly in the Jews' han^s. ^
If they are as wise as they claim to be, they will labour ^
to make Jews American, instead of labouring to make ^
America Jewish. TTie genius of the United States of -fF
America is Christian in the broadest sense, and its destiny
is to remain Christian. This carries no sectarian meaning
with it, but relates to a basic principle which differs from
other principles in that it provides for liberty with moral-
ity, and pledges society to a code of relations based on
fundamental Christian conceptions of human rights and
dutieSi_'

^As for prejudice or hatred against persons, that is
neither American nor Christian. Our opposition is only
to ideas, false ideas, which are sapping the moral stamina 1 ;
of the people. These ideas proceed from easily identified -j^'
sources, they are promulgated by easily discoverable
methods; and they are controlled by mere exposure. We
have simply used the method of exposure. When people
learn to identify the source and nature of the influence
swirling around them, it is sufficien.-t. \j&\, XjEue. NsoKos^a-

m MY LIFE AKD WORK

people once understand that it is not natural degenerw?,
but calculated subversion that aflSicts us, and they an .
safe]/ The explanation is the cure.

This work was taken up without personal motives.
When it reached a stage where we believed the American
people could grasp the key, we let it rest for the time. Our
enemies say that we began it for revenge and that we laid
it down in fear. Time will show that our critics are nwrdy
dealing in evasion because they dare not tackle the mun
question. Time will also ^ow that we are better friends
to the Jews' best interests than are those who praise them
to their faces and criticize them behind their backs.

CHAPTER XVIII

Dbmockact and Industry

PGKHAPS no word is more overworked nowadays
than the word "democracy," and those who shout
loudest about it, I think, as a rule, want it least. I
am always suspicious of men who speak ^bly of democ-
racy. I wonder if they want to set up some kind of a des-
potism or if they want to have somebody do for them what
they ought to do for themselves. I am for the kind of
democracy that gives to each an equal chance accord-
ing to his ability. I think if we give more attention to
serving our fellows we shall have less concern with the
empty forms of government and more concern with the
Uiings to be done. Thinking of service, we shall not
bother about good feeling in industry or life; we shall not
bother about masses and classes, or closed and open shops,
and such matters as have nothing at all to do with the
real business of living. We can get down to facts. We
stand in need of facts.

It is a shock when the mind awakens to the fact that not
all of humanity is human — that whole groups of people
do not regard others with humane feelings. Great efforts
have been made to have this appear as the attitude of a
class, but it is really the attitude of all "classes," in so far
as they are swayed by the false notion of "classes." Be-
fore, when it was the constant effort of propaganda to
make the people believe that it was only the "rich" who
were without humane feelings, the opinion became general
that among the "poor" the humane virtues flourished.

But the "rich" and the "poox" ateXio'Cii. n^tj wsiJa^

254 MY LIFE AND WORK

minorities, and you cannot classify society under sod'
beads. Tliere are not enough "rich" and there are not
enough "poor" to serve the purpose of such classification.
Rich men have become poor without changing tboi
natures, and poor men have become rich, and the probbn
has not been affected by it.

Between the rich and the poor is the great mass of tk
people who are neither rich nor poor. A society made
up exduavely of millionaires would not be different ftom
our present society; some of the millionaires would have
to raise wheat and bake bread and make machinery and
run trains — else they would all starve to death. Some-
one must do the work. Really we have no fixed classes.
We have men who will work and men who will not. Most
of the "classes" that one reads about are purely fictional
Take certain capitalist papers. You will be amazed by
gome of the statements about the labouring class. We vdio
have been and still are a part of the labouring class know
that the statements are untrue. Take certain of the
labour papers. You are equally amazed by some of the
statements they make about "capitalists." And yet on
both sides there is a grain of truth. The man who is a
capitalist and nothing else, who gambles with the fruits
of other men's labours, deserves all that is said against
him. He is in precisely the same class as the cheap gam-
bler who cheats workingmen out of their wages. The
statements we read about the labouring class in the capi-
talistic press are seldom written by managers of great in-
dustries, but by a class of writers who are writing what
they think will please their employers. They write what
they imagine will please. Examine the labour press and
you will find another class of writers who similarly seek to
tickle the prejudices which they conceive the labouring
man to have. Both kinds of writers are mere propagan-
dists. And propaganda that does not spread facts is self-

THINGS IN GENERAL 247

out of sheet steel. They were bxiilt indoors. In four
months we ran up a building at the Biver Rouge a third of
a mile long, 350 feet wide, and 100 feet hi^, covering more
than thirteen acres. TTiese boats were not built by marine
engineers. They were built simply by applying our pro-
duction principles to a new product.

Whh the Armistice, we at once dropped the war and
went back to peace.

An able man is a man who can do things, and his ability
to do things is dependent on what he has in him. What
he has in him depends on what he started with and what
he has done to increase and discipline it.

An educated man is not one whose memory is trained to
cany a few dates in history — ^he is one who can accomplish
things. A man who cannot think is not an educated man
however many college degrees he may have acquired, j-
Thinking is the hardest work any one can do — ^which is - '
probably the reason why we have so few thinkers. There -
are two extremes to be avoided : one is the attitude of con- , '
tempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery
of assuming that marching through an educational system
is a svae cure for ignorance and mediocrity. You cannot
learn in any school what the world is going to do next year,
but you can learn some of the things which the world has
tried to do in former years, and where it failed and where it
succeeded. If education consisted in warning the young
student away from some of the false theories on which men
have tried to build, so that he may be saved the loss of the
time in finding out by bitter experience, its good would be
unquestioned. An education which consists of signposts
indicating the failure and the fallacies of the past doubt-
less would be very useful. It is not education. yis\. "y^
possess the theories of a lot of pitiieaaota. ^s'g^ss^^'CvsaNa

248 MY LIFE AND WORK

very interesting, and sometimes profitable, but it is ihA
education. To be learned in science to-day is merely to
be aware of a hundred theories that have not been proved.
And not to know what those theories are is to be "un-
educated," "ignorant," and so forth. If knowledge of
guesses is learning, then one may become learned by tlte
simple expedient of making his own guesses. And by tk
same token he can dub the rest of the world "ignorant"
because it does not know what his guesses are. Bat
the best that education can do for a man is to put him in
possession of his powers, give him control of the tools witii
which destiny has endowed him, and teach him how to
think. The college renders its best service as an intelle&
tual gymnasium, in which mental muscle is developed and
the student strengthened to do what he can. To say,
however, that mental gymnastics can be had only in
college is not true, as every educator knows. A man's real
education be^ns after he has left school. True education
is gained through the discipline of life.

There are many kinds of knowledge, and it depends on
what crowd you happen to be in, or how the fashions of
the day happen to run, which kind of knowledge is most
respected at the moment. There are fashions in knowl-
edge, just as there are in everything else. When some
of us were lads, knowledge used to be limited to the Bible.
There were certain men in the neighbourhood who knew
the Book thoroughly, and they were looked up to and
respected. Bibhcal knowledge was highly valued then.
But nowadays it is doubtful whether deep acquaintance
with the Bible would be sufficient to win a man a name for
learning.

Knowledge, to my mind, is something that in the past
somebody knew and left in a form which enables all
who will to obtain it. If a man is bom with normal
human faculties, if he is equipped mth enough ability to

THINGS IN GENERAL 249

use the tools which we call ** letters " in reading or writing,
there is no knowledge within the possession of the race ^ .
that he cannot have — ^if he wants it! The only reason '
why every man does not know everything that the human
mind has ever learned is that no one has ever yet found ,
it worth while to know that much. Men satisfy their ' ■
minds more by finding out things for themselves than by
heaping togeliier the things which somebody else has
found out. You can go out and gather knowledge all
your life, and with all your gathering you will not catch
up even with your own times. You may fill your head
with all the "facts" of all the ages, and your head may
be just an overloaded fact-box when you get through.
The point is this: Great piles of knowledge in the head are;
not the same as mental activity. A man may be very
learned and very useless. And then again, a man may be
unlearned and very useful.

The object of education is not to fill a man's mind with
facts; it is to teach him how to use bis mind in thinking.
And it often happens that a man can think better if he is
not hampered by the knowledge of the past.

It is a very human tendency to think that what man-
kind does not yet know no one can leam. And yet it must
be perfectly clear to everyone that the past learning of
mankind cannot be allowed to hinder our future learning.
Mankind has not gone so very far when you measure its
progress against the knowledge that is yet to be gained —
the secrets that are yet to be learned.

One good way to hinder progress is to fill a man's head
with all the learning of the past; it makes him feel that
because his head is full, there is nothing more to leam.
Merely gathering knowledge may become the most useless
work a man can do. What can you do to help and heal
the world? That is the educational test. If a mA.'o. <:%;^
hold up his own end, he counts lot on-e. ^\ia (aas.V«3^

258 MY LIFE AND WORK

ment's thou^t will show the weakness of such an idea,
The healthy business, the business that is always maldiij
more and more opportunities for men to earn an honour
able and ample living, is the business in which every man
does a day's work of which he is proud. And the counti;
that stands most securely is the country in which men
work honestly and do not play tricks with the means d
production. We cannot play fast and loose with economic '
laws, because if we do they handle us in veiy hard w^

The fact that a piece of work is now being done by nine
men which used to be done by ten men does not mean that
the tenth man is unemployed. He is merely not employed
on that work, and the public is not carrying the burden of
his support by paying more than it ought on that work—
for after all, it is the public that pays!

An industrial concern which is wide enough awake to
reorganize for efficiency, and honest enough with the
public to charge it necessary costs and no more, is usually
such an enterprising concern that it has plenty of jobs at
which to employ the tenth man. It is bound to grow,
and growth means jobs. A well-managed concern is al-
ways seeking to lower the labour cost to the public; and it
is certain to employ more men than the concern which
loafs along and makes the public pay the cost of its mis-
m^iagement.

The tenth man was an unnecessary cost. The ultimate
consumer was paying him. But the fact that he was un-
necessary on that particular job does not meui that he is
imnecessary in the work of the world, or even in the work
of his particular shop.

Tlie public pays for all mismanagement. More than
half the trouble with the world to-day is the "soldiering"
and dilution and cheapness and inefficien<y for which the
people are paying their good money. Wherever two men
are being jMiid for what one can. do, the people are {wying

DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 259

: double what they ought. And it is a fact that only a
■■: little while ago in the United States, man for man, we
i -were not producing what we did for several years previous
- to the war.

A day's work means more than merely being "on duty "
: at the shop for the required number of hours. It means
: giving an equivalent in service for the wage drawn. And
when that equivalent is tampered with either way — when
the man ^ves more than he receives, or receives more than
he gives — it is not long before serious dislocation will be
manifest. Extend that condition throughout the country,
and you have a complete upset of business. All that in-
dustrial difficulty means is the destruction of basic equiva-
lents in the shop. Management must share t^e blame
with labour. Management has been la^, too — ^manage-
ment has found it easier to hire an additional five hundred
men than to so improve its methods that one hundred men
of the old force could be released to other work. The
public was paying, and business was booming, and manage-
ment didn't care a pin. It was no dififerent in the office
from what it was in the shop. The law of equivalents was
broken just as much by managers as by workmen.

Practically nothing of importance is secured by mere de-
mand. That is why strikes always fail — even though they
may seem to succeed. A strike which brings higher wages
or shorter hours and passes on the burden to the commim-
ity is really unsuccessful. It only makes the industry less
able to serve — and decreases the number of jobs that it
can support. This is not to say that no strike is justified
— ^it may draw attention to an evil. Men can strike with
justice — that they will thereby get justice is another ques-
tion. The strike for proper conditions and just rewards
is justifiable. The pity is that men should be compelled
to use the strike to get what is theirs by right. No
American ought to be compelled \o a\x&R \.wE\as. xi^:^&-.

260 MY LIFE AND WORK

He ought to receive them naturally, easily, as a matter cf
course. These justifiable strikes are usually the em-
ployer's fault. Some employers are not fit for their jobs.
The employment of men — the direction of their ener^
the arranging of their rewards in honest ratio to their pro-
duction and to the prosperity of the business — ^is no small
job. An employer may be unfit for his job, just as a man
at the lathe may be unfit. Justifiable strikes are a EOgn
that the boss needs another job — one that he can handk
The unfit employer causes more trouble than the unfit
employee. You can change the latter to another more
suitable job. But the former must usually be left to the
law of compensation. The justified strike, then, is ODe
that need never have been called if the employer had done
his work.

There is a second kind of strike — ^the stiike with a con-
cealed design. In this kind of strike the workingmen are
made the tools of some manipulator who seeks his own
ends through them. To illustrate: Here is a great indus-
try whose success is due to having met a pubUc need with
eflBcient and skillful production. It has a record for jus-
tice. Such an industry presents a great temptation to
speculators. If they can only gain control of it they can
reap rich benefit from all the honest effort that has been
put into it. They can destroy its beneficiary wage and
profit-sharing, squeeze every last dollar out of the public,
the product, and the workingman, and reduce it to the
plight of other business concerns which are run on low
principles. The motive may be the personal greed of the
speculators or they may want to change the policy of a
business because its example is embarrassing to other em-
ployers who do not want to do what is right. The in-
dustry cannot be touched from within, because its men
have no reason to strike. So another method is adopted.
T^" ^tiisiness may keep many outside shops busy supplying

DEMOCHACY AND INDUSTET 281'

it with material. If these outside shops can be tied up,
then that great industry may be crippled.

So strikes are fomented in the outside industries.
Every attempt is made to curtail the factory's source of
supplies. If the workingmen in the outside shops knew
what the game was, they would refuse to play it, but they
don't know; they serve as the tools of designing capitalists
without knowing it. There is one point, however, that
ought to rouse the suspicions of workingmen engaged in
this kind of strike. If the strike cannot get itself settled,
no matter what either side offers to do, it is almost positive
proof that there is a third party interested in having the
strike continue. That hidden influence does not want a-
settlement on any terms. If such a strike is won by the
strikers, is the lot of the workingman improved? After
throwing the industry into the hands of outside specu-
lators, are the workmen given any better treatment or

TTiere is a third kind of strike — ^the strike that is pro-
voked by the money interests for the pxupose of giving
labour a bad name. The American workman has idways
had a reputation for sound judgment. He has not al-
lowed himself to be led away by every shouter who prom-
ised to create the millennium out of thin air. He has
had a mind of his own and has used it. He has always
recognized the fundamental truth that the absence of
reason was never made good by the presence of violence.
In his way the American workingman has won a certain
prestige with his own people and throughout the world. >
Public opinion has been inclined to regard with respect
his opinions and desires. But there seems to be a de-
termined effort to fasten the Bolshevik stain on American
Labour by inciting it to such impossible attitudes and
such wholly unheard-of actions as shall change public
sentiment tram respect to criticism.

262 MY LIFE ASD WORK

Merely avoiding strikes, however, does not pnnute ik
diutiy. We may say to the woHdngman:

" You have a grievance, but the strike is no rrane^y-l
only makes the situation worse whether you win or kat'

Then the workingman may admit this to be true and n-
frain from striking. Does that settle anything?

No! If the worker abandons strikes as an onwcxtlif
means ctf bringing about desirable conditions, it aiqilf
means that employers must get bu^ on their own initio
tive and correct defective conditions.

The experience of the Ford industries with the wvA-
ingman has been entirely satisfactory, both in the United
States and abroad. We have no antagonism to uniuiSi
but we participate in no arrangements with either em-
ployee or employer organizations. The wages paid SR
always higher than any reasonable union could think of de-
manding and the hours of work are always shorter. Hieie
is nothing that a imion membership could do for our peo-
ple. Some of them may belong to unions, probably the
majority do not. We do not know and make no attempt
to find out, for it is a matter of not the slightest concern
to us. We respect the imions, sympathize with their good
aims and denounce their bad ones. In turn I think that
they give us respect, for there has never been any authori-
tative attempt to come between the men and the manage
ment in our plants. Of course radical agitators have tried
to stir up trouble now and again, but the men have mostly
regarded them simply as hiunan oddities and their interest
in them has been the same sort of interest that they would
have in a four-legged man.

In England we did meet the trades union questicoi
squarely in our Manchester plant. The workmen of
Mandiester are mostly imionized, and the usual English
union restrictions upon output prevail. We took over a
body plant in which were a number of imion carpenters.

DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 263

At once the imion officers asked to see our executives and
arrange terms. We deal only with our own employees
and never with outside representatives, so our people re-
fused to see the union officials. Thereupon they called
the carpenters out on strike. The carpenters would not
strike and were expelled from the imion. Then the ex-
pelled men brou^t suit against the union for their share
of the benefit fimd. I do not know how tlie litigation
turned out, but that was the end of interference by trades
luuon officers with our operations in England.

We make no attempt to coddle the people who work
wiUi us. It is absolutely a give-and-take relation. During
the period in which we largely increased wages we did
have a considerable supervisory force. The home life of
the men was investigated and an effort was made to find
out what they did with their wages. Perhaps at the time
it was necessary; it gave us valuable information. But it
would not do at all as a permanent affair and it has been
abandoned.

We do not believe in the "glad hand," or the 'profession-
alized ''personal touch," or "human element." It is too
late in the day for that sort of thing. Men want something
more than a worthy sentiment. Social conditions are not
made out of words. They are the net result of the daily
relations between man and man. The best social spirit is
evidenced by some act which costs the management some-
thing and which benefits all. That is the only way to
prove good intentions and win respect. Propaganda,
bulletins, lectures — they are nothing. It is the right act
sincerely done that counts.

A great business is really too big to be human. It
grows so large as to supplant the personality of the man.
In a big business the employer, like the employee, is lost
in the mass. Together they have created a great pro-
ductive organization which sends out articles that thfi.

264 MY LIFE AND WORK

world buys and pays for in return mon^ that providni
livelihood for everyone in the business. The business it
self becomes the big thing.

There is something sacred about a big business -vAeA
provides a hving for hundreds and thousands of faini&&
When one looks about at the babies coming into the woild,
at the boys and girls going to school, at the young vcA-
ingmen who, on the strength of their jobs, are manyiiig
and setting up for themselves, at the thousands of homo
that are beiag paid for on installments out of the eaxmap
of men — ^when one looks at a great productive organiza-
tion that is enabling all these things to be done, then the
continuance of that business becomes a holy trust. It be-
comes greater and more important than the individuals.

The employer is but a man like his employees and is
subject to all the hmitations of humanity. He is justified
in holding his job only as he can fill it. If he can steer
the business straight, if his men can trust him to nm
his end of the work properly and without endangering
their security, then he is filling his place. Otherwise he
is no more fit for his position than would be an infant.
The employer, like everyone else, is to be judged solely by
his ability. He may be but a name to the men — a name
on a signboard. But there is the business — it is more than
a name. It produces the living — and a hving is a pretty
tangible thing. The business is a reality. It does things.
It is a going concern. The evidence of its fitness is that
the pay envelopes keep coming.

You can hardly have too much harmony in business.
But you can go too far in picking men because they har-
monize. You can have so much harmony that there will
not be enough of the thrust and counterthrust which b
life — enough of the competition which means effort and
progress. It is one thing for an organization to be work-
izilgiianQoniousIy towaidoufi o\:>\<e^WV\tU another thing

DEMOCKACY AND IKDUSTHY 265'

for an organization to work harmoniously with each in-
dividual unit of itself. Some organizations use up so much
energy and time maintaining a feeling of harmony that
they have no force left to work for the object for which
the organization was created. The organization is second-
ary to the object. The only harmonious organization
that is worth anything is an organization in which all the
members are bent on the one main purpose — ^to get along
toward the objective. A common purpose, honestly be-
lieved in, sincerely desired — ^that is the great harmonizing
principle.

I pity the poor fellow who is so soft and Habby that he
must always have " an atmosphere of good feeling " around'
him before he can do his work. There are such men.!
And in the end, unless they obtain enough mental and,
moral hardiness to lift them out of their soft reliance oni
"feeling," they are failures. Not only are they business^
failures; they are character failures also; it is as if their,
bones never attained a sufficient degree of hardness to
enable them to stand on their own feet. There is alto-
gether too much reliance on good feeling in our business
organizations. People have too great a fondness for
working with the people they like. In the end it spoils a
good many valuable quahties.

Do not misunderstand me; when I use the term "good
feeling" I mean that habit of making one's personal likes
and dislikes the sole standard of judgment. Suppose you
do not like a man. Is that anything against him? It
may be something against you. What have your likes or
dislikes to do with the facts? Every man of common
sense knows that there are men whom he dislikes, who are
really more capable than he is himself.
And taking tdi this out of the shop and into the broader
fields, it is not necessary for the rich to love the poor or the
poor to love the rich. It is not necessary for the employ^j

266 MY LIFE AND WOEK

to love the employee or for the employee to love the
ployer. What is necessary is that each should try to da
justice to the other according to his deserts. That is ni
democracy and not the question of who ought to own th
bricks and the mortar and the fiunaces sJid the mill!.
And democracy has nothing to do with the quesUoi)
"Who ought to be boss?"

That is veiy much like asking: "Who ought to be tk
tenor in the quartet?" Obviously, the man who can aqi
tenor. You could not have deposed Caruso. Suppon
some theory of musical democracy had consigned Caruso
to the musical proletariat. Would that have reared
another tenor to take his place? Or would Caruso's {pfti
have still remained his own?

CHAPTER XIX
What We Mat Expect

WE ABE — ^unless I do not read the signs aiight
—in the midst of a change. It is going on all
about US, slowly and scarcely observed, but
with a firm surety. We are gradually learning to relate
cause and effect. A great deal of that which we call dis-
turbance — a great deal of the upset in what have seemed
to be established institutions — is really but the surface in-
dication of something approaching a regeneration. The
public point of view is dianging, and we real^ need only
a somewhat different point of view to make the very bad
system of the past into a very good system of the future.
We are displacing that peculiar virtue which used to be
admired as hard-headedness, and which was really only
wooden-headedness, with intelligence, and also we are
getting rid of mushy, sentimentalism. The first confused
hardness with progress; the second confused softness with
progress. We are getting a better view of the realities and
are beginning to know that we have already in the world
all things needful for the fullest kind of a life and that we
shall use them better once we learn what they are and what
they mean.

Whatever is wrong — and we all know that much is
wrong — can be righted by a clear definition of the wrong-
ness. We have been looking so much at one another, at
what one has and another lacks, that we have made a
personal affair out of something that is too big for per-
sonalities. To be sure, human nature enters hu'gefy into
our economic problems. Selfishness exists, and doubtless

268 MY LIFE AND WORK

it colours all the competitive activities ci life. If
ness were the characteristic of any one dass it mi^t kl
easily dealt with, but it is in human fibre eveiywhot
And greed exists. And envy exists. And jealousy exist&

But as the struggle for mere existence grows less— find
it is less than it used to be, although the sense of uoco*
tainty may have increased — ^we have an opportunity tore-
lease some of the finer motives. We think less of the friih
of civilization as we grow used to them. Progress, as tbe
world has thus far known it, is accompanied by a great in-
crease in the things of life. There is more gear,
wrought material, in the average American backyard thaa
in the whole domain of an African king. The average
American boy has more paraphernalia around him thaoi
whole Eskimo community. The utensils of kitchen, dining
room, bedroom, and coal cellar make a list that would have
staggered the most liixurious potentate of five hundred
years ago. The increase in the impedimenta of life only
marks a stage. We are like the Indian who comes into
town with all his money and buys everything he sees.
There is no adequate realization of the large proportion
of the labour and material of industry that is used in
furnishing the world with its trumpery and trinkets, which
are made only to be sold, and are bought merely to be
owned — that perform no service in the world and are at
last mere rubbish as at first they were mere waste. Hu-
manity is advancing out of its trinket-making stage, and
industry is coming down to meet the world's needs, and
thus we may expect further advancement toward that life
which many now see, but which the present "good
enough" stage hinders our attaining.

And we are growing out of this worship of material
possessions. It is no longer a distinction to be rich. Aa
a matter of fact, to be rich is no longer a common ambition.
People do not care for money as money, as they once did.

WHAT WE MAY EXPECT 269

Certainly they do not stand in awe of it, nor of him who '
possesses it. What we accumulate by way of useless sur-
plus does U3 no honour.

It takes only a moment's thou^t to see that as far as
individual personal advantage is concerned, vast accumu-
lations of money mean nothing. A human being is a hu-
man being and is nourished by the same amoimt and
quaUty of food, is warmed by the same weight of clothing,
whether he be rich or poor. And no one can inhabit more
than one room at a time.

But if one has visions of service, if one has vast plans
which no ordinary resources could possibly reaUze, if one
has a life ambition to make the industrial desert bloom
like the rose, and the work-a-day life suddenly blossom
into fresh and enthusiastic human motives of higher
character and efficiency, then one sees in large sums of
money what the farmer sees in his seed corn — ^the be-
ginning of new and richer harvests whose benefits can no
more be selfishly confined than can the sun's rays.

There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire
who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow ac-
cumulate real power, and the other is the penniless re-
former who thinks that if only he can take the money from
one class and give it to another, all the world's iUs will be
cured. They are both on the wrong track. They might as
well try to comer all the checkers or aU the dominoes of the
world under the delusion that they are thereby cornering
great quantities of skill. Some of the most successful
money-makers of our times have never added one peniyr-
worth to the wealth of men. Does a card player add to
the wealth of the world?

If we all created wealth up to the limits, the easy limits,
of our creative capacity, then it would simply be a case of
there being enough for everybody, and everybody getting
enough. Any real scarcity of the necessaries of life in. t)af&

270 MY LIFE AND WORK

world — ^not a fictitious scaidty caused by the kdJ
clinking metallic disks in one's purse — ^is due only to bi
of production. And lade of production is due onl^ta
often to lack of knowledge of how and what to prodntl

This much we must believe as a starting point:

That the earth produces, or is capable of ptoduoDi
enough to pve decent sustenance to everyone — ^not <rf M
alone, but of everything else we need. For everythin^i
produced from the earth.

That it is possible for labour, production, distribut)«
and reward to be so organized as to make certain thil
those who contribute shall receive shares determined by H
exact justice.

That regardless of the frailties of human nature, ov
economic system can be so adjusted that selfishness, it
though perhaps not abolished, can be robbed of power to
work serious economic injustice.

The business of life is easy or hard according to the skill |
or the lack of skill displayed in production and distributioo- 1
It has been thought tiiat business existed for profit. That 1
is wrong. Business exists for service. It is a profession, 1
and must have recognized professional ethics, to violate 1
which declasses a man. Business needs more of the pro-
fessional spirit. The professional spirit seeks professional
integrity, from pride, not from compulsion. The pro- ,
fessiooal spirit detects its own violations and penalizes '
them. Business will some day become clean. A machine
that stops every little while is an imperfect machine, and
its imperfection is within itself. A body that falls sick
every little while is a diseased body, and its disease is
within itself. So wiibbvismesa. l\&ia\]iU,many of them

WHAT WE MAY EXPECT 271

purely the faults of the moral constitution of business, clog
its progress and make it sick every little while. Some day
the ethics of business will be universally recognized, and
in that day business will be seen to be the oldest and most
useful of all the professions.

All that the Ford industries have done — all that I havef
done — is to endeavom* to evidence by works that service
comes before profit and that the sort of business which
makes the world better for its presence is a noble profession. .
Often it has come to me that what is regarded as the some-''
what remarkable progression of our enterprises — I will
not say "success," for that word is an epitaph, and we are
just starting — is due to some accident; and that the
methods which we have used, while well enough in their
way, fit only the making of our particular products and
would not do at all in any other line of business or indeed
for any products or personalities other than our own.

It used to be taken for granted that our theories and our
methods were fundamentally imsound. That is because
they were not understood. Events have kiUed that kind
of comment, but there remains a wholly sincere beUef that
what we have done could not be done by any other com-
pany — ^that we have been touched by a wand, that neither
we nor any one else could make shoes.-or hats, or sewing
machines, or watches, or typewriters, or any other neces-
sity after the manner in which we make automobiles and
tractors. And that if only we ventured into other fields
we sAiould ri^t quickly discover om* errors. I do not
agree with any of this. Nothing has come out of the
air. The foregoing pages should prove that. We have
nothing that others might not have. We have had no
good fortune except that which always attends any one
who puts his best into his work. There was nothing that

272 MY LIFE AND WORK

could be called "favourable" about our beginning. ^1
began with almost nothing. What we have* we eansA,
and we earned it by unremitting labour and faith in i
principle. We took what was a luxury and turned it

a necessity and without trick or subterfuge. When nt
began to make our present motor car the country had few
good roads, gasoline was scarce, and the idea was firml;
implanted in the public mind that an automobile was ^
the best a rich man's toy. Our only advantage was Iwi
of precedent.

We began to manufacture according to a creed — a creed
which was at that time unknown in business. The newii
always thought odd, and some of us are so constituted that
we can never get over thinking that anything which is new
must be odd and probably queer. The mechanical woA-
ing out of our creed is constantly changing. We are coft-
tinually finding new and better ways of putting it into
practice, but we have not found it necessary to alter the
principles, and I cannot imagine how it might ever be neces-
sary to alter them, because I hold that they are absolute^
imiversal and must lead to a better and wider life for
all.

If I did not think so I would not keep working — ^for the
money that I make is inconsequent. Money is useful
only as it serves to forward by practical example the
principle that business is justified only as it serves> that it
must always give more to the community than it takes
away, and that unless everybody benefits by the existence
of a business then that business should not exist. I have
proved this with automobiles and tractors. I intend to
prove it with railways and public-service corporations —
not for my personal satisfaction and not for the money that
may be earned. (It is perfectly impossible, applying these
principles, to avoid making a much larger profit than if
profit were the main object.) I want to prove it so that

WHAT WE MAY EXPECT 278

ill of us may have more, and that all of us may live better
by increasing the service rendered by all businesses. Pov-
erty cannot be abolished by formula; it can be aboli^ed
sniy by hard and intelligent work. We are, in effect, an
S3q)erimental station to prove a principle. That we do
make money is only further proof that we are right. For
that is a species of ai^fument that establishes itself with-
out words.

In the first chapter was set forth the creed. Let me re-
peat it in the h^t of the work that has been done und»
it — ^for it is at the basis of all our work: '

(1) An absence oi fear of the future or of veneration for
the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure,
limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more
intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in
honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What
is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for

(2) A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing
best ought to be the one to do it. It is criminal to' try to
^t business away from another man — criminal because
Dne is then trying to lower for personal gain the condition
jf one's feUow-men, to rule by force instead of by intelli-
^nce.

(3) The putting of service before profit. Without a
profit, business cannot extend. There is nothing inher-
jntly wrong about making a profit. Well-conducted
business enterprises cannot fail to return a profit but
jrofit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good
iervice. It cannot be the basis — it must be the result of
iervice.

(4) Manufacturing is not buying low and selling hi^.
[t is the process of buying materials fairly and, with the
imallest possible addition of cost, transforming those
naterials into a consumable product ood. dAa\x^>:£u£o%''^

274 MY LIFE AND WORK

to the consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp deal-
ing tend on^ to clog this progression.

We must have production, but it is the spirit behind it
that counts most. That kind of production which is a
service inevitably follows a real desire to be of service.
The various wholly artificial rules set up for finance and
indiistry and which pass as "laws" break down with such
frequency as to prove that they are not even good guesses.
The basis of all economic reasoning is the earth and its
products. To make the yield of the earth, in all its forms,
large enough and dependable enou^ to serve as the basis
for real life — ^the life which is more than eating and sleep-
ing — is the highest service. That is the real foundatioB
for an economic system. We can make things — ^the prob-
lem of production has been solved brilliantly. We can
make any number of different sort of things by the miUions.
The material mode of our life is splendidly provided for.
There are enough processes and improvements now pig-
eonholed and awaiting application to bring the physical
side of life to almost millennial completeness. But we are
too wrapped up in the things we are doing — ^we big not
enough concerned with the reasons why we do them.
Our whole competitive system, our whole creative ex-
pression, all the play of our faculties se^n to be centred
around material production and its by-products of success
and wealth.

There is, for instance, a feeling that personal or group
benefit can be had at the eiq>en8e of other persons or
groups. There is nothing to be gained by crushing
any one. If the farmer's bloc should crush the manu-
facturers would the fanners be better off? If the manu-
facturer's bloc should crush the farmers, would the
manufacturers be better off? Could Capital gain by

WHAT WE MAY EXPECT 275

cmsliiag Labour? Or Labour by crushing Capital? Or
does a man in business gain by crushing a competitor?
No, destructive competition benefits no one. The kind
of competition which results in the defeat of the many and
the overlordship of the ruthless few must go. Destruc-
tive competition lacks the qualities out of which progress
comes. Progress comes from a generous form of rivalry.
Bad competition is personal. It works for the aggrandize-
ment of some individual or group. It is a sort of warfare.
It is inspired by a desire to "get" someone. It is wholly
selfish. That is to say, its motive is not pride in the prod-
uct, nor a desire to excel in service, nor yet a wholesome
ambition to approach to scientific methods of production.
It is moved simply by the desire to crowd out others and
monopolize the market for the sake of the money returns.
That being accomplished^ it always substitutes a product
of inferior quality.

Freeing ourselves from the petiy sort of destructive
competition frees us from many set notions. We are too
closely tied to old methods and single, one-way uses. We
need more mobiUty. We have been using certain things
just one way, we have been sending certain goods through
only one channel — and when that use is slack, or that
chiumel is stopped, business stops, too, and all the sorry
consequences of "depression" set in. Take com, for ex-
funple. There are millions upon millions of bushels of
com stored in the United States with no visible outlet.
A certain amount of com is used as food for man and
beast, but not all of it. In pre-Prohibition days a certain
amoimt of com went into the making of Uquor, which was
not a very good use for good com. But through a long
course of years com followed those two channels, and
when one of than stopped the stocks of com begui to pile

are my life and work

up. It is the money fiction that usually retards the mm
ment of stocks, but even if money were plentiful we codi
not possibly consume the stores of food which we atm-
times possess.

If foodstuffs become too plentiful to be consumed ai
food, why not find other uses for them? Why use can
only for hogs and disUU^es? Why sit down and be-
moan the terrible disaster that has b^aUen the com laat
ketP Is there no use for com besides the making of pen); f
or the making of whisky? Surely there must be. 'Hieie]
should be so many uses for com that only the imporUnt
uses coxJd ever be fully served; there ought always bal
enough channels open to permit com to be used without
waste.

Once upon a time the farmers burned com as fuel — con
was plentiful and coal was scarce. That was a crude way
to dispose of com, but it contained the germ of an ide&.
lliere is fuel in com; oil and fuel alcohol are obtainaUe
from com, and it is hi^ time that someone was opening up
this new use so that the stored-up com crops may be
moved.

Why have only one string to our bow? Why not two?
If one breaks, there is the other. If the hog business
slackens, why should not the farmer turn his com into
tractor fuel?

We need more diversity all round. The four-trad:
system everywhere would not be a bad idea. We have a
single-track money system. It is a mighty fine system
for those who own it. It is a perfect system for the
interest-collecting, credit-controlling financiers who liter-
ally own the commodity called Money and who literally
own the machinery by which money is made and used.
Let them keep their system if they like it. But the people
are finding out that it is a poor system for what we call
"hard times" because it ties up the line and stops traffic'

WHAT WE MAY EXPECT 277

If there are special protectiona for the interests, there
ought also to be special protections for the plain people.
Diversity of outlet, of use, and of financial enablement,
are the strongest defenses we can have against economic
emergencies.

It is likewise with Labour. There singly ouj^t to be
flying squadrons of yoimg men who would be available
for emergency conditions in harvest field, mine, shop, or
railroad. If the fires of a hundred industries threaten to
go out for lack of coal, and one million men are menaced
by unemployment, it would seem both good business and
good humanly for a sufficient number of men to volunteer
for the mines and the railroads. There is always some-
thing to be done in this world, and only ourselves to do it.
The whole world may be idle, and in the factory sense
there may be "nothing to do." There may be notjiing
to do in this place or that, but there is always something
to do. It is this fact which should urge us to such an
organization of ourselves that this "something to be
done" may get done, and unemployment reduced to a
TniniTTiiim .

Every advance begins in a small way and with the in-
dividual. ITie mass can be no better than the sum of the
individuals. Advancement begins within the man him-
self; when he advances from half-interest to strength of
purpose; when he advances from hesitancy to decisive
directness; when he advances from immaturity to matur-
ity of judgment; when he advances from apprenticeship
to mastery; when he advances from a mere dilettanie at
labour to a worker who finds a genuine joy in work; when
he advances from an eye-server to one who can be en-
trusted to do his work without oversight and without
prodding— why, then the world advances! The advance

278 MY LIFE AND WORK

is not easy. We live in flabby times when men are beinj
taught that everything ought to be easy. Woric t}iat
amounts to anything will never be ea^. And the hi^
you go in the scale of responsibility, the harder becomei
the job. Ease has its place, of course. Every man who
works ought to have sufficient leisiire. The man who
works hard should have his easy chair, his comfortable
fireside, his pleasant surroundings. Hiese are his by
right. But no one deserves ease until after his work is
done. It will never be possible to put upholstered ease
into work. Some work is needlessly hard. It can be
lightened by proper management. Every device ought to
be employed to leave a man free to do a man's work.
Flesh and blood shoiild not be made to bear burdens that
steel can bear. But even when the best is done, woric
still remains work, and any man who puts himself into
his job will feel that it is work.

And there cannot be much picking and choosing. The
appointed task may be less than was expected. A man's
real work is not always what he would have chosen to do.
A man's real work is what he is chosen to do. Just now
there are more menial jobs than there will be in the future;
and as long as there are menial jobs, someone will have to
do them; but there is no reason why a man i^ould be
penalized because his job is menial. There is one thing
that can be said about menial jobs that cannot be said
about a great many so-called more responsible jobs, and
that is, they are useful and they are respectable and they
are honest.

The time has come when drudgery must be taken out of
labour. It is not work that men object to, but the ele-
ment of drudgery. We must drive out drudgery wherever
we find it. We shall never be wholly civilized until we
remove the treadmill from the daily job. Invention is
doing this in some degree "now. We ba.ve succeeded to a

WHAT WE MAY EXPECT, 279

very great extent in relieving men of the heavier and more
onerous jobs that used to sap their strength, but even when
lighteniug the heavier labour we have not yet succeeded
in removing monotony. That is another field that beck-
ons us — ^the abohtion of monotony, and in tiying to ac-
compUsh that we shall doubtless discover other changes
that will have to be made in our system.

The opportunity to work is now greater than ever it was.
The opportunity to advance is greater. It is true that the
young man who enters industry to-day enters a very dif-
ferent system from that in which the yoxmg man of
twenty-five years ago began his career. Hie system
has been tightened up; there is less play or friction in it;
fewer matters are left to the haphazard will of the indi-
vidual; the modem worker finds himself part of an organ-
ization which apparently leaves him Uttle initiative. Yet,
with all this, it is not true that "men are mere machines."
It is not true that opportunity has been lost in organiza-
tion. If the young man will liberate himself from these
ideas and regard the system as it is, he will find that what
he thought was a barrier is really an aid.

Factory organization is not a device to prevent the ex-
pansion of abihty, but a device to reduce the waste and
losses due to mediocrity. It is not a device to hinder the
ambitious, dear-headed man from doing his best, but a de-
vice to prevent the don't-care sort of individual from doing
his worst. That is to say, when laziness, carelessness,
slothfulness, and lack-interest are allowed to have their
own way, everybody suffers. The factory cannot prosper
and therefore cannot pay Uving wages. When an organ-
ization makes it necessary for the don't-care class to do
better than they naturally would, it is for their benefit —
they are better physically, mentally, and financiaUy.

280 MY LIFE AND WORK I

yifh&t wages should we be able to pay if we trusted a la^l
don't-care class to their own methods and gait of pro-
duction?

If the factory system which brought mediocrity up to a
higher standard operated also to keep ability down to a
lower standard — it would be a very bad system, a very
bad system indeed. But a system, even a perfect one,
must have able individuals to operate it. No system
operates itself. And the modem system needs more
brains for its operation than did the old. More braina
are needed to-day than ever before, although perhaps they
are not needed in the same place as they once were. It is
just like power: formerly every machine was run by foot
power; the power was right at the machine. But nowadays
we have moved the power back — concentrated it in the
power-house. Thus also we have made it unnecessary for
the highest types of mental ability to be engaged in every
operation in the factoiy. The better brains are in tJie
mental power-plant.

Every business that is growing is at the same time creat-
ing new places for capable men. It cannot help but do
so. This does not mean that new openings come every
day and in groups. Not at all. They come only after hard
work; it is the fellow who can stand the gaff of routine and
still keep himself alive and alert who finally gets into
direction. It is not sensational brilliance that one seeks
in business, but sound, substantial dependabiUty. Big
enterprises of necessity move slowly and cautiously. The
young man with ambition ought to take a long look ahead
and leave an ample margin of time for things to happen.

A great many things are going to change. We shall
learn to be masters rather than servants of Nature. With
a3} our fancied sWll we a\S\ de^Twi las^^lv on p-'-»'al re-

WHAT WE MAY EXPECT 281

sources and think that they cannot be displaced. We dig
coal and ore and cut down trees. We use the coal and
the ore and they are gone; the trees cannot be replaced
within a lifetime. We shall some day harness the heat
that is all about us and no longer depend on coal — ^we may
now create heat through electricity generated by water
power. We shall improve on that method. As chemis-
try advances I feel quite certain that a method will be
found to transform growing things into substances that
will endure better than the metals — we have scarcely
touched the uses of cotton. Better wood can be made
than is grown. The spirit of true service will create for
us. We have only each of us to do oxu* puis sincerely.

Everything is possible . . . "faith is tiie substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

THE BOOK ENDB '.^. .v

Vv^

INDEX

INDEX

Absentees discharged, III

Accidents, safeguarding against, 118-
IS; causes of, 114

Advancement, perBon&l. 96, 277

Advertisement, first, of Ford Motor
Co, »-4

Agents, SB, 60

Agrlcultare, a primary fanction, 6

AJnsley, Charles, 88, 84

Alexander, Henrj, drives Ford car to
top of Ben Nevis, 4,600 fee^ in
1911, 70

Antecedents, a man's, of no interest
In hiring at Ford factory, SS

Assemblf of a Ford car, 80; first ex-
periment in a moving; assembl]' line,
April 1. 1918, 81} results of the ex-
periment, 81-4

Automobile, public's first attitude to-
ward, 85

Automobile business, bad methods of.
In its beginnings, 38

Bankers play too great a part in
business, 176; In raOioads, 224

Banking, 1S6, 180

Bedridden men at work, 109-10

Benz car on exhibition at Macj's In
16S5, 84

Birds, Mr. Ford's fondness for, 386

Blind men can work, 107

Bokbevlsm, 4-fi, 9

Bonuses— Ssf ■Profit-Sharing"

Borrowing money, 168; what It would
have meant to Ford Motor Co. in
1920, 1T6

British Board of Agriculture, 196

British Cabinet and Fordson trac-
tors, 1B6-9

Bnrroughs, John, 236

Business, monopoly and profiteering
bad for. 11; function of, 12

Buying for immediate needs on^^
148

Cadillac Company, W

Capital, 198-4

Capitalist newspapers, 3M

Capitalists, 10

Cash balan^ large, 104

Charity, profession^, 20fi

aty life, 193

'i:iasses" mosUy fictional, 2S4

Classification of work at Ford plants,

106, 108
Cleanliness of factory, 114
Coal used In Ford plants from Ford

mines, 161
Coke ovens at River Rouge plant,

161
Collier, Colonel D. C, 64
Competition, 46-6, 276
Consumption varies according to

price and quality, 140-8
Convict labour, 209
Cooper, Tom, 60
CoSperative farming, 206
Cork, Ireland, Fordson tractor planti

160, 197
Com, potential uses of, 2TS
Costs of production, records of, 98 1

prices force down, 146; high wages

contribute to low, I4T
Country, living In, 192
Courtney, F. S, 197
Creative work, 104
Creed, Industrial, Mr. Ford's, 19-90^

273-4
Cripples can work, 107, 200
CroBB, 3otet "El., Wl

INDEX

Dalbr, Prof. W. E^ 197

Deaf and dumb men at work, 110

Dtorbont Ind»ptMd*»t, 302

Dearborn ploot, IM, 303

DcmocTO^t 258

Detndt Automobile Co, 88, 8T

Detnrit General Hocpltal, now Ford

1 HotpItal.au

Detroit, Toledo and IrontoD Rollwaf,

151, 171^ UI; purchased b^ Foid

Uotor Co, in Harcb, I92I, 328
Derclopment, opportuntf for. In

U. S, 1
Diomoad Hanofocturing Co. An, 167
Dlidpline at Ford plants, 110-11
"DiTidends, abolitlv rather tboa

lower wages," 188
DiTidends, small. Ford policy of, 181
Doctors, 316

Dollar, the flactnating, 180
Drndgery, 3TS

Eoe^ Boats, 348

Economy, 188

Edison, Thomas A, 234

Educated man, an, definition of, 247

Education, Mr. Ford's ideas on, 247-
SO

Educational Department, 111

filectrfclty generated at Ford plants,
181

"Employeea, sU, are really partners,"
117

Employment Department, 100

Bqoal, all men ore not, 10, 184

Experience^ lack of, no bar to em-
ployment, BS, 113

Experiments, no record of, kept at
Ford factoxicB, 85

"Experts," no, at Ford plants, 28, 88

Factory, Ford, growth of, 71, 74

Factory organization, function of,
379-80

Fidlure, habit of, 220

Farmings lack of knowledge in, IS]
no conflict between, and Industry,
186; future dcTelopment in, 20S

titrming vJtta tractors, 19&

Pear, 219^20

Federal Reserve System, 177

Fighting, a cMue for Jmnwdiate die
charge^ II&

Rnanc^ 158

Financial Grills Id 1931, how Ford
Motor Co. met, 189

Financial system at preseat Inade-
quate, 18^ 177

Firestone, Harvey S, 240

Flat Rock plant, 191

Floor space for workers, 118

Flour-milling, 205

Foodstuffs, potential naes of, 378

Ford cai^tbe fln^ 21, 80-4t No.
5,000,000, 21; the second, SSt in-
troduction of. In En^and to 190^
75-6 { about 11,000 parts in, TB;
sales and production — Bt4 *^alie>"

Ford, Henry — Bom at Dearfoora,
UIcL, July SO, 1868, 22{ mechan-
ically incUned, 33-28; leaves scboci
Bt seventeen, becomes apprenUee
at Drydock Engine Works, 24{
watch repairer, 24; works with lo*
cal representative of WestinghouM
Co. OS expert in setting up and re-
pairing rood engines, 25; builds a
Steam tractor in his worlcsbop, 26;
reads of the 'Wlent gas CQglne" In
the World of Beitne; 37; in ISS7
bidlds one on tlie Otto four-cyda
model, 28; father gives bint forty
acres of timber land, 20; marriage
29; In 1890 begins work on double-
qrllnder en^e, 29; leaves farm
and works u engineer and nutchin-
ist iritb the Detroit Electric Co«
80; rents bonse in Detroit and BctS
up workshop In back yard, 30; in
1892 completca first motor car, 80t
first road test In 1893, 82; buUdi
second motor car, 83; quits job
with Electric Co. August IS, 1899^
and goes Into automobile business,
85; orgBnlaaUou of Detroit Auto-
mobile Co, 86; resigns from. In
March, 1902, 86; rents shop to coif
tinue experiment^ at 81 Fade

INDEX

Viaee, Detroit; 8T| boti Alexander
^nnton In nee, STt vkAj reflec-
tlona on bnslncM, ST-Mt ^ I*OB
bnllds, with Tom Cooper, two cara,
the "WQ" and the "Arrow" for
speed, W{ foTDif the Ford Motor
Co, 01 1 binv controUlDg share in
IMM, S2; bi^ds "Model A," *4|
bnUdi "Model B" and "Model C,"

-Habit

to a certain Inertia)'*

07;]

Tke

in the "Arrow," JfT; bolldi first real
nannfaetorlng plant, 08; in Maf,
190^ asaembtea 811 cart In alx
irorUngi da^a, 88; In Jonc^ IW^
asseinblea one hundred cars In tme
Obj, B8i in ISOg, deddoB to mann-
factnre only "Model T," painted
blad^ 72; buys alxtf acrea of land
for plant at Highland Farfc, out-
side of Detroit 73; how he met the
financial crUes of 1921, 169; bnys
Iletroit, Toledo ft Ironton R7,
March, 1921, 226

*7ord doesn't nse the Ford," IW

Ford, Edsel, JI2, ITS

Ford Hospital, 214

Ford Motor Co, organised 190% JIlj
Henr7 Ford bnjs controUing share
In 1906, 52; how It met financial
crisis In 1921, 169; thirty-five
brandies of, tn U. S. ITS

**For4 fou can dissect a, bnt jou
cannot kHI It," 04

Fordson tractor, prices, 14T, 202^;
genesis and derelopmeiit of, 2Q0-8t
cost of farming with, 208-1; BfiOO
sent to England In 1917-18, 198

Fordgn trader 242

Oai from coke otoib at Rlrer Ronge
plant utilized, 151-2

•H3oId Is not wealth," 183

"Good feeling" In working not essen-
tia], though desirable, 264-5

Ooremment, the function of, S

Greaves, R. N^ 19T

Greed vs. service, 19

Greenhall, GUbert, 107

Grosse Foint trscl^ 51

Highland Park plant, T8, 84-«

Hobb^ Robert W, 197

Hospital, Ford. 314

Hough, JvAge, renders dedslon

agidnst Ford Motor Co. In Selden

Patent suit, 62
Hoars of labour per daj redoeed from

nine to eight In January, 1914, 138
"Human, a great business Is too big

to be," 268-64
Human element In buslnesa, 121

Ideas, old and new, 2-8, 17
Improvements in prodncta, 16, 17
Interstate Commerce Commlssltm,

280,283
Inventory, cutting down, by im-
proved frdgfat service, 178
Investment, Interest on, not properly
chargeable to operating expenses.

Jacobs, Edmund, 54

"Jail, men in. ought to be able to

support their famUles," 209
Jewish qnestlon, studies in the, 250-2
Jobs, menial, 2T8
"John E. Street," 8»-8

Labour, tbe economic fundamental,

9; and Capital, 275; potaitlal uses

of, 2TT
Labour leaders, 208
Labour newspapers, 254
Labour turnover. 111, 129-M
TAwyers, like bankers, know abK^

lutely nothing aliout business," 224
Legislation, the function of, 7
Licensed Association, 62
"life is not a location, bnt a jou^

ney," 48
Light for working 118
Loss, taking a, in times of business

depression, 180-88, 143

Hanchester, ^1^ Vtst^. -^nsh. ^A^

asa

INDEX

MmcUaerj, tti jSan h Uf«, 3

HanufKtnre, ■ prlmuf fnnetkoi S

Medical Deputmcat, lU

Mexico, »3-8

MUner, Lord, 19»-«

Modda— "A." 54, W-n, T6| -B," SI,

"X," W, 9»-70) "N," "E," "S," B>-
T0( "T," 31, BB-n, 78, 78, 87;
ehuglng, not • Ford policy, 148-9

Money, chuin^ I3| preient fTitem
of, IS, 182, 177; what It Ii worth,
40) liiTMted in a buslDCM not
charfoble to it, 89-40 ( floctiuting
Tshie of, 1B0| U not we«ltt^ 183

Monopoly, b«d for builnesi, II

Monotonous wor^ 105

Motimi, wutc^ ellmlUitlng, 87-90

NorthrlUc^ Hichq plant, combinatlaa
farm and factory, 190

(Hdfleld, Barney, 51

Opportonlty for young men of to-
day, 279

OrgankatloD, excess, and red tape, 91

Orenaaii, Henry, 197

Otto engine, 27-8

Overhead charge per car, cut from
9146 to «98, 174

Parts, about 5,000, In a Ford car, 79

Patemalism baa no place In Industry,
180

"Peace Ship," 345

Fbllantbropy, 210

Physical Ineapadty not necessarily
a hindrance to working, 107

Pbysfdans, 218

Flquette plant, 58, 86, 89

Parerty, 184

Power-farming, 195

Price policy, Mr. Ford's, 161-2

Producer depends upon service, 13-18

Production, principles of Ford plant,
7T; plan of, worked out carefully,
166. (For production of Ford
cars, M« "^ales" and table of pro-
Aictloii on p. IW)

Prof Msioaal charity, 306
Profiteering bad for boaloci^ U
Proflt-charfiiA 13ff-iaO
Property, the right of, •
Profit, tmall per artidc. Urge agg*

gate, in
Profit* belong to pimnnet, pntma,

and putcbaser, 1S4
Price raising TSt redodng^ IW
"Prlcea, If, of goods are abvR

Incomea of the people^ then get Ae

prioea down to the fncomea," Ui
"Prices, unduly high, always

of unsound busineaa," 141
Prices of Ford toarlng oat Ace

1909, 14S
PriMU Uwa, 909
Trlscoert ongfat to be able to np-

port their families,'* 200

HaOroada, actire

ceased to manage, 323; suftikv

from bankers and lawmen, 3M4i

folly of Img hauls, 380-88
Reacticmarles, 5-0
Red Upe, 91
"Refinancing," 40
Refonnem, a, 5-9
RepeUUve labour, 103
"Rich, It Is no longer a dlstlnctloB

to he," 268-0
Bight of property, 9
RlTcT Bonge plant, 74, 84, 8^ 151,

20^224,246
Bontlne work, 1(»
Royal Agricultural Society, 196
Rumours in 1920 that Ford Motor Co.

was In a bad financial cmiditiaD,

169
Russia, under Sorietism, 4

Safeguarding machines, II8-1S
"Sales depend upon wages," 124
Sales of Ford cars In 190S-4, l.TOB
cars, 54; in 1904-5, 1,695 can, ST;
1905-6, 1,599 cara, SS; IBOO-T,
8,428 cars, SS; 1007-8, 6,808 can,
59; ISOS-^ 10,607 cars. 71: 1909-
1A, UjlM «m, 14\ LOIO-II. a*r

INDEX

289

>28 cars, 74; Bee alao table of pro-

dQCtion since 1909, p, IW
Saturation, point ot, 154
Saving habit, 18T
SciioolB, trade, 210; HeniT Ford

Trade ScIxmI, 211
Scottish ReUabilltf Trials, test of

Ford ear in, 76
Scrap, atSlsatioii of, 149
Seasonal tmeffiployment, 16S, 18S
Selden, George B^ SI
Seldea Patent, 4St famous salt

Bgahist Ford Motor Co, In 1909,

60-S
Service, principles of, 19-20; "Hhe

foimdatian of real husincss," U;

**comes before pro&V' 271
SimpUdtr, phUosophf of, 18-15
Social Department, 129
Sorensen, Charles E, 197-V
Standard Oil Co^ Ifi7
Standardization, 48-9, 148
SUtlstlcs abolished in 1030, 174
Steel, Tonadhun, 18, 69
Strelow's carpenter shop, 52
Strike, tbe right to, M5
Strikes, 265-26S; why, fall, 2BB
Snggestians from employees, 100
Surgeons' fees, 216
Sweepings, saving^ nets 96,000 a year.

Titles, no, to Jobs at Ford factory,

93-S
Tractoi^-ig«« "Fordson"
Trade, foreign, 212
Trade schools, 210; Henry Ford

'fcade SchooU 211

Training, little, required for jobs at

Ford plants, 110
Transportation, a primary function, S
TnmoTcr of goods, 107, I7S

Union talxnir, 265
Universal car, essential attributes ot,
68

Vanadhun steel, 18, 66
VentUftUon of factory, 118, 114

Wages, mlntnm m of 96 a day at all
Ford plants, 116, 184] are partner-
ship dlstribatlons, 121; fallacy of
regulating, on basis of cost of,
living, 122-8; sales depend upon
124t minimum of 9S a day Is-
troduced In January, 1914, 126;
danger In rapidly raising, 128;
cuttings a slovenly way to meet
business depression, 188; high,
contribute to low cost, 147; abolish
dividends rather than lower, 168

War, opposition to, 240; Ford IndoE-
trles in tb^ 248

Waste, vs. service, 19; eliminating
87-90, IBS

Weeks-McLean Bird BUI, 2B7

Weight, excess. In an automobile, S8

Welfare work— ,9** "Social Depart-
ment," "Uedlcal Deportmatt," and
"Educatitmal Department."

Whiton, Alexander, 87

Women, married, whose buabanda
have Jobs, not employed at Ford
plants. 111

Work— its place In life, 8} tbe rl|^
to, 10

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